WILSON, SOL

WILSON, SOL (1896–1974), U.S. painter, printmaker, educator. Born in Vilno, Russia, now Poland, Wilson emigrated to the U.S. in 1911. He studied art at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. Like many other American artists of his generation, he worked for the Works Project Administration during the Depression: among his public works were the paintings The Indian Ladder (1940) for the town of Delmar in New York and Outdoor Sports (1942) for Westhampton Beach, also in New York. His paintings of figures, interiors, and landscapes reveal the influence of his art teachers, George Bellows and Robert Henri. His visits to Massachusetts fishing villages resulted in numerous images of fisherman, boats, and harbors, such as Torn Sail and Provincetown Deck, rendered in expressive jewel tones of red, green, blue, yellow, or in a palette of earth tones, exemplified in To the Island. Wilson taught at the Art Students League and the American Artists School. He lived predominantly in New York, but also spent time in Provincetown and Rockport, Massachusetts. His work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Car negie Institute, the Corcoran Gallery, the National Academy of Design, the Library of Congress, and the Whitney Museum, among other places. His work can be found in the collections of the Biro-Bidjan Museum, Russia, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian, among other museums. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. Melosh, Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater (1991). (Nancy Buchwald (2nd ed.)