ABSTRACT
Among the many tragic lives which the history of art in this century contains, one of the most painful to contemplate—even at this distance in time—is that of the American painter Alfred H. Maurer. Most of the American artists who turned to modernism in the early years of the century encountered harsh criticism and firm rejection. In the attitude of Maurer's tyrannical and overbearing father, himself a highly successful commercial artist and genre painter, the prevailing Philistinism of the period took the form of the most sweeping and unforgiving parental disapproval and condescension. The exhibition of Maurer's paintings at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery is by no means a complete retrospective, but the thirty-eight works included in this survey are certainly sufficient to remind us both of the artist's undeniable quality and of his uncertain hold on that quality. The pictures range in date from 1903 to 1931.
