Samuel Lewis Shane

Samuel Lewis Shane (14 April 1900 – 14 October 1993) was a modern American Jewish painter whose works span a period from the early 1920s to shortly before his death in 1993. He spent about two years in Paris in 1927-1929 working together with some of the most known painters of the time. He was a friend of Fernand Léger with whom he shared a studio. He was also a friend of Man Ray, Stuart Davis and John Graham. After he returned to the United States, he exhibited with Independent Artists in NYC, was a member of the art colony in Provincetown and continued to practice with the Art Students League.

Biography

S. L. was born Sholem Luzar Olshansky, or Sholem Luzar ben Moyshe HaCohen v’Esther.

S. L. was born on April 14, 1900, in Ryzhnyifke, (in Russian [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0A17FC3F550C758DDDA90994DE494D81 Razhanovka] ) Kiev gubernya, Ukraine, Russian empire. He came to Philadelphia, PA, America in 1906 with his father’s youngest brother Bernard, mother Esther (nee Dzubati, in America the name was changed to Sabbath) younger brothers Edward & Bernard.

S. L.'s father, Moyshe left Russia in 1903 to avoid being drafted into the Russian army for the Russo-Japanese war. Sam remembered having very little to eat as a small child. His mother used to pick the children up to kiss a photo of Moyshe, their father in America. He also remembered being carried to kheder (religious school) as a child by the young men who helped the teacher. The streets were dirt and in summer either deep mud or deep dust not navigable by a small child. He started kheder when he was three years old as was the custom. Another memory was of a series of pogroms (organized attacks on Jewish communities). The peasants in neighboring villages would warn them when the Cossacks were coming signifying a coming pogrom. Some of the houses and the synagogue had pogrom cellars in which they would hide during such a rampage.

Ryzhnyifke was a shtetl, (small market town with a primarily Jewish population, serving the surrounding peasant villages). The family ran and owned the inn, the only building in the town with a wooden floor and “porch.” Sam was the first child, so the parents were probably married in 1899. It was an arranged marriage. Esther was probably about 16 or 17 and Moyshe about 25, (actual ages unknown). Family legend has it that the family had run the inn for 300 years. In Philadelphia the family first lived on So Beulah St in a row house with an outhouse. Across the street was a store with glass show windows. When he was about 11 he saw workmen painting the name of a new business on the glass and decided that he wanted to do that. He later saw workmen painting an advertisement on a billboard. That set his course to art and calligraphy for his life passion. He took classes at the Graphic Sketch Club in So Philadelphia, the forerunner of the [http://www.fleisher.org/ Fleisher Institute] . After a few years he also went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to study. He may also have studied at the school of the Art Museum, later the Philadelphia College of Art.

Sam moved to New York City in 1920 where he studied at the Art Students League and supported himself doing free lance calligraphy. He painted, sketched and made art in various media continuously.

Sam became involved in left wing political and art circles, at first with Jewish anarchists under the influence of his uncle Bernard (who was editor of the "Fraye Arbeter Shtime", ("Free Workers’ Voice") the Yiddish anarchist paper for a number of years and who was an important part of the Stelton, NJ anarchist community [http://www.talkinghistory.org/stelton/steltonhistory.html] . Sam later became sympathetic to the Soviet Union and the “revolutionary” developments there. In Manhattan he was a member of the John Reed Club [http://home.gwu.edu/~cuff/wright/organizations/johnreedclub.html] , of artists, writers and other creative people sympathetic to the Soviet Union. He also became very committed to Israel, particularly during the 1967 June war. He remained a steadfast supporter of Israel and even the more right wing Israeli policies and politics.

In 1927 he went to Paris to paint and study. He worked with and possibly lived with Fernand Leger with whom he shared a studio. While in Paris he was close friends with John Graham, Stuart Davis and Man Ray among others. Many of his artist friends were left wing Jews from the States also. He learned French and lived the life of an impoverished artist, painting Paris street and cabaret scenes. He exchanged art with his artist friends. John Graham sold over 150 paintings of Sam’s. Man Ray made several photos of Sam, which are part of the family collection. There are also works by John Graham and Stuart Davis as well as letters between them.

He married Belle Schwartz informally on New Year's Day 1930 in Philadelphia. She was a dancer and actress. She was also the daughter of Jewish “revolutionaries” from Bialystok, Russian Poland. They later remarried, legally with a Justice of the Peace in NYC after their oldest child was born. Sam kept his interests in dance and music the rest of his life and they made folk, social and square dancing their hobby. Their marriage was tempestuous and emotional. They remained partners until they died 63 years later within 8 months of each other. He died at age 93 on 14 Oct 1993 and she age 86 in July, 1994.

In the early 30s he participated in a number of exhibits organized by the Independent Artists in NYC. In 1931 a major painting of his, "Speakeasy", was given particular positive mention in the "World Telegram" as part of a review of the group’s exhibit in the Armory. He and Belle also became part of the Provincetown, Cape Cod, MA art community going there for six months a year, April through November. They returned to Greenwich Village in Manhattan for the winters. In Provincetown, Belle worked in the Repertory Theater with Eva LaGalienne and he painted and played chess. He would paint pictures of Portuguese fishermen for fish to eat. They lived in fishermen’s houses, renting them for the six months. There are many scenes of the upper Cape among his paintings. The last year they went to Provincetown was 1936 from the date on his last paintings made on the Cape. Many of these paintings were sold. The family was told that various prominent people including Ben Hecht had a number of his paintings.

In 1936 the long trip to Provincetown was abandoned as was Sam’s participation in exhibitions. They moved from the Village and eventually settled in apartments in Sunnyside in Queens. He took a full time job in advertising doing lettering and layout work. He worked for some of the largest advertising firms in NYC, Benton & Bowles, Darcy and others. Upon entering the advertising world he changed his professional name to Sinclair Lewis Shane to avoid anti-semitic insinuations.

In 1938 they bought a plot in a newly formed cooperative, Jewish left wing community, eventually named Shrub Oak Park for a summer home. It was near Peekskill, NY and a much older radical, predominantly Jewish, community, Mohegan Lake, to which they had connections. Sam built the house, a 24’ square Cape Cod, with the help of his father-in-law and some friends. All three children and the oldest grandchild spent their summers there growing up in a Yiddish oriented, progressive political community. He was a devoted husband and father although in a pre-modern sense.

He took a hiatus from painting in oils after he started regular employment in the late 30s. Although there were practical reasons, i.e. a growing family and regular employment, he also was very affected by the Great Depression and worsening situation in Europe with the Spanish Civil War and Hitler’s rise. World War II affected him strongly. There was a map he kept of the Eastern Front. The sweep of the German armies through the Poland, Russia and Ukraine and Jewish settlements there was very traumatic for him and the whole family.

The first painting he made that ended the hiatus was towards the end of World War II. He called it "Exodus". It depicts a large rowboat full of people (refugees). It represents the movement of the Danish Jews to Sweden or just the plight of the Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi extermination. He made a number of studies and paintings of this subject in various formats, impressionist to abstract. After the war he slowly started to paint again and continued to draw many pictures in pastel, gouache and charcoal. He didn’t exhibit again and kept most of his work or gave or sold them to friends and family.

During the war and after Sam would go out on weekends with the family and paint, usually water colors of the Hudson Valley towns and landscapes. He considered his paintings his children. He couldn’t bear to be parted from his family or art work. He began working in pastels which for many years was his favorite medium, fast and colorful.

He and Belle were devoted folk dancers and later square dancers. He made many pastels and sketches of folk and square dancing. Their younger two children were jazz musicians. Jazz bands and scenes became another favorite subject for his art. The family also loved the ballet which was another subject of his art. In later years he included klezmer bands and other Jewish subjects. Although he never became religious he moved from ignoring Jewish subjects to including them in many of his works as he grew older. Trips to Mexico, Puerto Rico and Israel provided subject matter for his painting in later years.

In 1976, upon Belle’s retirement, they moved to Philadelphia, to be near their oldest two children and grandchild. Sam began painting again in earnest particularly focusing on dance and jazz. He also made paintings specifically for his grandchildren, of sports, circuses and similar more realistic subject matter. He continued to work in the studio set up in their Philadelphia house until practically the day he died. He did scenes of his childhood in Ryzhnyifke, particularly with his grandfather, people and scenes in Jerusalem, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

A characteristic of his art is the use of strong colors, crowded scenes, streets without people or night clubs full of people. He did work in many media, oil, gouache, pastel, pencil, charcoal, lithographs. He often made a variety of sketches, black and white and in color before painting a work in oil. He was very skilled in copying exactly, which is seen in his sketches, lithographs and paintings. Most of his works were impressionist with elements of cubism and non-objectivism.

The house, in which they lived in their later years, in Germantown, Philadelphia, is now a repository of a large number of his collected works and has an exhibit of his work from his early paintings through to his latest ones.

External links

* An [http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060626014319181 article] about S.L. Shane published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in the summer of 2006, by Stephan Salisbury