Samuel Lewis Shane
Encyclopedia
Samuel Lewis Shane was a modern American painter whose works span a period from the early 1920s to shortly before his death in 1993. Beginning in 1920, he studied under John French Sloan
of the Ashcan School
at the Art Students League
in New York City. His classmates, including John Graham
, Stuart Davis
and Alexander Calder
would have important influences on his career. In 1927, he went to Paris with Graham, Davis, and Calder and they worked with some of the most renowned European painters of the time. In particular, he was befriended by Fernand Léger
with whom he lived and shared a studio. Man Ray
photographed him along with many of the other artists of the time. Upon their return to the United States, Graham, Davis, Shane, and others would evolve an abstract expressionist style that came to be known as the New York School. Shane exhibited with the Independent Artists in NYC, was a member of the art colony in Provincetown and continued to paint as a lifetime member of the Art Students League
.
, Ukraine, Russian Empire
. Ryzhnyifke was a shtetl
, or a 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 his parents were probably married in 1899. It was an arranged marriage. Esther was about 16 or 17 years old and Moyshe was probably 25 years old. Family oral history suggests that the family had run the inn for 300 years.
Sam remembered having very little to eat as a small child. 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. He also held memories 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.
His mother used to pick the children up to kiss a photo of Moyshe, their father, in America. His father had left Russia in 1903 to avoid being drafted into the Russian army for the Russo-Japanese war
.
Shane came to Philadelphia in 1906 with his father's youngest brother Bernard, his mother Esther (née Dzubati; in America the name was changed to Sabbath) and his younger brothers Edward and Bernard.
to study. He may also have studied at the school of the Art Museum, later the Philadelphia College of Art.
at the Art Students League. His classmates, including John Graham
, Stuart Davis
and Alexander Calder
, had important influences on his evolving art. In 1922, the Art Students League featured a Shane line drawing on the cover of their school bulletin. While Sloan’s Ashcan School
was focused largely on New York scenes and everyday people, the student's art evolved into abstract expressionism
and later the New York School. Shane supported himself doing free lance calligraphy. He painted, sketched and created art in various media.
Shane became involved in left wing
political and art circles, at first with Jewish anarchists
under the influence of his uncle Bernard. Bernard was editor of the Fraye Arbeter Shtime, or Free Workers’ Voice, the Yiddish anarchist paper for a number of years, and was an important part of the Stelton, New Jersey anarchist community. Shane later became sympathetic to the Soviet Union and the "revolutionary" developments there. In Manhattan he was a member of the John Reed Club
, of artists, writers and other creative people sympathetic to the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Pact with Germany in 1939 , he rejected Soviet style political ideas. Later, he became very committed to Israel
, particularly during the 1967 June war. He remained a steadfast supporter of Israel and even the more conservative Israeli policies and politics.
with whom he shared a studio. While in Paris he continued his close friendships with John Graham, Stuart Davis and Man Ray among others. He studied French and lived the life of an artist, painting Paris street and cabaret scenes. He exchanged art with his artist friends. John Graham sold over 150 of Shane’s paintings. Man Ray
took several photos of Shane as part of his compilation of photographs of artists in Paris. The Man Ray photographs are part of the family collection. There are also works by John Graham and Stuart Davis as well as letters between them.
. He also exhibited his paintings at the Downtown Gallery. He and Belle also became part of the Provincetown, Cape Cod
, artist 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 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
, D'Arcy
and others. Upon entering the advertising world he changed his professional name to Sinclair Lewis Shane.
In 1938 they bought a plot in a newly formed cooperative
community, eventually named Shrub Oak Park for a summer home. It was near Peekskill, NY and a much older community, Mohegan Lake, to which they had connections. Shane 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 progressive political community. He was a devoted husband and father.
He took a hiatus from painting in oils after he started regular employment in the late 1930s. 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.
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 Shane 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 dance
rs and later square dance
rs. He made many pastels and sketches of folk and square dancing. Their younger two children, Joanne and Mathew, 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.
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.
John French Sloan
John French Sloan was an American artist. As a member of The Eight, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists. He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window...
of the Ashcan School
Ashcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement grew out of a group...
at the Art Students League
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
in New York City. His classmates, including John Graham
John Graham (painter)
John Graham was an 18th-century Scottish painter and teacher of art.Graham was born in Edinburgh and apprenticed to a coach-painter in Edinburgh, George MacFarquhar. He next moved to London and became a coach-painter. He started studying at the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited there between...
, Stuart Davis
Stuart Davis (painter)
Stuart Davis , was an early American modernist painter. He was well known for his jazz influenced, proto pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bold, brash, and colorful as well as his ashcan pictures in the early years of the 20th century.-Biography:He was born in Philadelphia to Edward Wyatt...
and Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
would have important influences on his career. In 1927, he went to Paris with Graham, Davis, and Calder and they worked with some of the most renowned European painters of the time. In particular, he was befriended by Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
with whom he lived and shared a studio. Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
photographed him along with many of the other artists of the time. Upon their return to the United States, Graham, Davis, Shane, and others would evolve an abstract expressionist style that came to be known as the New York School. Shane exhibited with the Independent Artists in NYC, was a member of the art colony in Provincetown and continued to paint as a lifetime member of the Art Students League
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
.
Early life
Shane was born Sholem Luzar Olshansky, or Sholem Luzar ben Moyshe HaCohen v’Esther. on April 14, 1900, in Ryzhnyifke, (in Russian Ryzhanovka ) in the Kiev GubernyaKiev Governorate
Kiev Governorate , or Government of Kiev, was an administrative division of the Russian Empire.The governorate was established in 1708 along with seven other governorates and was transformed into a viceroyalty in 1781...
, Ukraine, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. Ryzhnyifke was a shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
, or a 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 his parents were probably married in 1899. It was an arranged marriage. Esther was about 16 or 17 years old and Moyshe was probably 25 years old. Family oral history suggests that the family had run the inn for 300 years.
Sam remembered having very little to eat as a small child. 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. He also held memories of a series of pogroms
Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire
The term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the 19th century.The first pogrom is often considered to be the 1821 Odessa pogroms after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were killed...
(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.
His mother used to pick the children up to kiss a photo of Moyshe, their father, in America. His father had left Russia in 1903 to avoid being drafted into the Russian army for the Russo-Japanese war
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
.
Shane came to Philadelphia in 1906 with his father's youngest brother Bernard, his mother Esther (née Dzubati; in America the name was changed to Sabbath) and his younger brothers Edward and Bernard.
Philadelphia
In Philadelphia the family first lived on South 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. Art and calligraphy became his life passion. He took classes at the Graphic Sketch Club in So Philadelphia, the forerunner of the Fleisher Institute. After a few years he also went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine ArtsPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...
to study. He may also have studied at the school of the Art Museum, later the Philadelphia College of Art.
New York City
In 1920, Shane moved to New York City, where he studied with John French SloanJohn French Sloan
John French Sloan was an American artist. As a member of The Eight, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists. He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window...
at the Art Students League. His classmates, including John Graham
John Graham (painter)
John Graham was an 18th-century Scottish painter and teacher of art.Graham was born in Edinburgh and apprenticed to a coach-painter in Edinburgh, George MacFarquhar. He next moved to London and became a coach-painter. He started studying at the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited there between...
, Stuart Davis
Stuart Davis (painter)
Stuart Davis , was an early American modernist painter. He was well known for his jazz influenced, proto pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bold, brash, and colorful as well as his ashcan pictures in the early years of the 20th century.-Biography:He was born in Philadelphia to Edward Wyatt...
and Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, had important influences on his evolving art. In 1922, the Art Students League featured a Shane line drawing on the cover of their school bulletin. While Sloan’s Ashcan School
Ashcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement grew out of a group...
was focused largely on New York scenes and everyday people, the student's art evolved into abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
and later the New York School. Shane supported himself doing free lance calligraphy. He painted, sketched and created art in various media.
Shane became involved in left wing
Jewish left
The term "Jewish left" describes Jews who identify with or support left wing, occasionally liberal causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations. There is no one organization or movement which constitutes the "Jewish left," however...
political and art circles, at first with Jewish anarchists
Jewish anarchism
Jewish anarchism is a general term encompassing various expressions of anarchism within the Jewish community.- Secular Jewish Anarchism :Many people of Jewish origin, such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Martin Buber, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky, Murray Rothbard or David D. Friedman have...
under the influence of his uncle Bernard. Bernard was editor of the Fraye Arbeter Shtime, or Free Workers’ Voice, the Yiddish anarchist paper for a number of years, and was an important part of the Stelton, New Jersey anarchist community. Shane later became sympathetic to the Soviet Union and the "revolutionary" developments there. In Manhattan he was a member of the John Reed Club
John Reed Club
The John Reed Club was an American, semi-national, Marxist club for writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist, activist, and poet, John Reed.-Founding:...
, of artists, writers and other creative people sympathetic to the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Pact with Germany in 1939 , he rejected Soviet style political ideas. Later, he became very committed to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, particularly during the 1967 June war. He remained a steadfast supporter of Israel and even the more conservative Israeli policies and politics.
Paris, France
In 1927 he went to Paris with Graham, Davis, and Calder to paint and study. He worked with and lived with Fernand LégerFernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
with whom he shared a studio. While in Paris he continued his close friendships with John Graham, Stuart Davis and Man Ray among others. He studied French and lived the life of an artist, painting Paris street and cabaret scenes. He exchanged art with his artist friends. John Graham sold over 150 of Shane’s paintings. Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
took several photos of Shane as part of his compilation of photographs of artists in Paris. The Man Ray photographs are part of the family collection. There are also works by John Graham and Stuart Davis as well as letters between them.
Family life
He married Belle Schwartz informally on New Year's Day 1930 in Philadelphia. She was a dancer and actress. They later remarried legally with a Justice of the Peace in NYC after their oldest child was born. Shane kept his interests in dance and music for the rest of his life. They made folk, social and square dancing their hobby. Dance and music became a major theme of his paintings. 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 aged 86 in July, 1994.Independent Artists
In the early 1930s 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 Armory69th Regiment Armory
The 69th Regiment Armory located at 68 Lexington Avenue between East 25th and 26th Streets in Manhattan, New York City is a historical building which began construction in 1904 and was completed in 1906. The building is still used to house the U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment, as well as for the...
. He also exhibited his paintings at the Downtown Gallery. He and Belle also became part of the Provincetown, Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
, artist community going there for six months a year, April through November. They returned to Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
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
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
had a number of his paintings.
Queens
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 SunnysideSunnyside, Queens
Sunnyside is a neighborhood in the western portion of the New York City borough of Queens, in New York state, in the United States. It shares borders with Hunters Point and Long Island City to the west, Astoria to the north, Woodside to the east and Maspeth to the south...
in Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
. 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
Benton & Bowles
Benton & Bowles was a New York-based advertising agency founded by William Benton and Chester Bowles in 1929.-History:The agency's success was closely related to the rise in popularity of radio. Benton & Bowles invented the radio soap opera to promote their clients' products, and by 1936 were...
, D'Arcy
D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles
D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles was an advertising agency in the United States with worldwide subsidiaries.DMB&B was established in November 1985 by the merger of the Benton & Bowles and D'Arcy-MacManus Masius advertising agencies...
and others. Upon entering the advertising world he changed his professional name to Sinclair Lewis Shane.
In 1938 they bought a plot in a newly formed cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
community, eventually named Shrub Oak Park for a summer home. It was near Peekskill, NY and a much older community, Mohegan Lake, to which they had connections. Shane built the house, a 24’ square Cape Cod
Cape Cod (house)
A Cape Cod cottage is a style of house originating in New England in the 17th century. It is traditionally characterized by a low, broad frame building, generally a story and a half high, with a steep, pitched roof with end gables, a large central chimney and very little ornamentation...
, 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 progressive political community. He was a devoted husband and father.
He took a hiatus from painting in oils after he started regular employment in the late 1930s. Although there were practical reasons, i.e. a growing family and regular employment, he also was very affected by the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and worsening situation in Europe with the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
and Hitler's rise. World War II affected him strongly. There was a map he kept of the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
. 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.
Returns to painting
Shane's first new oil was painted 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 JewsRescue of the Danish Jews
The rescue of the Danish Jews occurred during Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark during World War II. On October 1st 1943 Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered Danish Jews to be arrested and deported...
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 Shane 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 dance
Folk dance
The term folk dance describes dances that share some or all of the following attributes:*They are dances performed at social functions by people with little or no professional training, often to traditional music or music based on traditional music....
rs and later square dance
Square dance
Square dance is a folk dance with four couples arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, beginning with Couple 1 facing away from the music and going counter-clockwise until getting to Couple 4. Couples 1 and 3 are known as the head couples, while Couples 2 and 4 are the side couples...
rs. He made many pastels and sketches of folk and square dancing. Their younger two children, Joanne and Mathew, were jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
musicians. Jazz bands and scenes became another favorite subject for his art. The family also loved the ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
which was another subject of his art. In later years he included klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
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.
Return to Philadelphia
In 1976, upon Belle's retirement, they moved to Philadelphia, to be near their oldest two children, Paul and Joanne, and a grandchild, Robert. Shane 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 worked in the studio set up in their Philadelphia home right up to the end. 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
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
and non-objectivism.
The house, in which they lived in their later years, in Germantown
Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Germantown is a neighborhood in the northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, about 7–8 miles northwest from the center of the city...
, 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
- Article about S. L. Shane published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in the summer of 2006, by Stephan Salisbury