After his first year in America (1940), our knowledge of Boleslaw’s paintings and drawings becomes very limited. It is understandable that he would have focused most of his creative energy toward his fledging art studio which was launched in early 1940 at the Steinway Mansion and produced (according to Marylin Chorlton, who was there from its earliest days), engaged in producing “paintings, tapestries [and] designing furniture.” As far as we know, neither Boleslaw nor Marja Cybis ever returned to Poland. This means that all of his art during the 1940s was created in the United States.
The Cybises’ trip through the American Southwest in the summer of 1939, after their work on the Polish Pavilion was finished, produced a series of conte crayon drawings that the studio would publish thirty years later as the Folio One series of lithographs. The 1970-71 Cybis in Retrospect exhibit included photographs of two oil impasto paintings that were done in 1940 but were based on that 1939 tour: Indians Hunting Buffalo, and Indian Hunters and Wild Stallions which was described as having been a “panorama featuring a Wild West motif.”
Additional photographic enlargements in the 1970-1971 show were detail shots of various sections of a circa-1940 al fresco mural (not known for whom painted) entitled “Seasons”. The detail photos were captioned as ‘Garland Weavers’, ‘Musical Maidens’, ‘Shield with Eagle’, ‘Wreath’, ‘Harvest’, and ‘Baby.’ I don’t really understand what some of these have to do with the seasons, but am reporting them as they are described in that museum catalog.
The Story of Time
This very interesting painting first appeared in a Polish auction house (DESA Unicum) in March 2014. It was described there with the Polish title Czas (Time) and as being a “self technique on board” measuring almost 19.75″ high and 13.5” wide. What is even more interesting are the notations on the back of the framing paper:
Location: Hall Promenade Deck
Theme: Time
For one of the following:
S.S. President Monroe MC Hull No. 54
S.S. President Hayes ” 55
S.S. President Garfield ” 56
S.S. President Adams ” 57
S.S. President Van Buren ” 58
Design of the [illegible but looks like ‘spandrels’?] to correspond to the general theme
A bit of Googling reveals that these were five of the seven attack transport ships that were commissioned by the U.S. Government in 1940. A Federal art project was launched by the Maritime Commission (the MC), and a competition was held for artists to submit designs for paintings to decorate the walls of various areas on the ships, such as the Promenade Deck. It was reported that
“…four hundred and sixty-two artists submitted one thousand four hundred and sixty-two designs of better than average merit. This was the first anonymous, national competition for decoration of American ships, hence stimulating a great deal of interest among eager, untried painters, also serving to introduce many fine artists to the layman.”
The typical payment to a winning artist was less than $1500, but in 1940 that amount was equivalent to about $30,000 today, adjusted for inflation!
After the war, these ships were converted to international and cargo service. Because they were owned by the same company (APL, American Presidents Line) it’s likely that artworks were rotated between vessels over time. The numerical column in the list refers to the Maritime Commission hull number given to each ship: The President Monroe was MC hull #54, the President Hayes was MC hull #55, and so on. Thus, those numbers do not refer to the years that a painting was on the ship as on-board art. They are instead part of the submission of this painting by Boleslaw Cybis to the competition.
Whether Time was one of the winners is not known, because four of the ships were scrapped between 1973 and 1976; the S.S. President Van Buren did not survive a torpedo attack in 1942.
Getting back to the painting itself, it had formerly been in the private collection of a New York owner and from thence to an auction sale at the Lipert Gallery during the 1990s. It did not sell in the 2014 auction in Warsaw, possibly because of a starting bid level of 12,000 PLN (Polish zloty; about $3400 USD). It reappeared at DESA again in May 2016 with a bid floor of half that amount. The painting then sold for 9000 PLN which at the prevailing exchange rate was about $2135 USD.
It is not known how many other paintings Boleslaw Cybis created after he and his wife established themselves at the Steinway Mansion studio in 1940. I suspect that there were very, very few and those were probably done before he moved to New Jersey in 1942. There is a signed-and-dated drawing in the 1940s Drawings post purporting to be from 1948 but the signature is somewhat suspect, thus throwing the date into question as well.
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