ART AT THE SM&NC
COLLECTIONS SPOTLIGHT
Sophy Regensburg didn’t begin painting until she was 67, when she started a captivating late-in-life career like her contemporary Grandma Moses. She spent the last two decades of her life painting daily in her bedroom, inspired by the objects and scenes surrounding her world on the Upper East Side. Throughout her short but prolific career, Regensburg mastered the still-life and gained the attention of the New York City art world.
Born in 1885 in New York City to upper-class parents Charles Noah Pollak and Rachel Pollak, Regensburg always had a creative streak. She studied drawing at The Chase Art School in Manhattan under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. In 1908 she married cigar manufacturer Melville E. Regensburg and settled into their apartment at 200 East 71 st Street. The artist had three children, Elizabeth Pollak Zimmerman, Charles Pollak Regensburg and Mary Regensburg Feist, who became a successful, nationally recognized artist herself. Regensburg was highly skilled in the fiber arts, making quilts, needlepoint and knit pieces, and hooked rugs throughout her life. Her love for patterning translates directly to her detailed paintings that often include at least one decorative element, such as the delicate lace tablecloth seen in Fresh Shrimps . Quite unusually, Regensburg arrived at her mature style immediately; her brilliantly composed paintings exhibit her fantastic eye for color, seen in the beautifully rendered shades of orange and pink in the crustaceans of this work. Regensburg once said, “I paint whatever is in the refrigerator.” Shrimp was, charmingly, a common theme in her work, and Fresh Shrimps reflects what the artist would have had on hand in her apartment. Regensburg’s paintings capture the zeitgeist of mid-century America, particularly in this painting, as shrimp cocktail was considered a trendy appetizer in the 1960s.
This work can be seen in our winter exhibition Sophy Regensburg: A Retrospective , on view in the Bendel Galleries through March 19, 2023.
SOPHY REGENSBURG (1885 – 1974) Fresh Shrimps ,1968 Casein on canvas 11 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches (30 x 40 cm) Collection of the SM&NC Gift of Mr. Charles Regensburg, 87.9.2
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