The Likeness of Youth
Portraits by modernist William Sommer are on view during an exhibition at WOLFS Gallery
Sommer’s Children at WOLFS Gallery
An exhibition currently on view at WOLFS Gallery in Beachwood, Ohio, Sommer’s Children explores the portraiture of 20thcentury American modernist William Sommer. While many artists depicted the likeness of youth at some point in their careers, usually their own children or those of friends and acquaintances, few made it their focal point. Sommer, however, transformed the niche genre into his specialty, creating dozens of children’s portraits in his illustrative, storybook style.
“There is only one artist from this period who has left behind a large group of children’s portraits of sufficient distinction and originality as to warrant a separate sub-chapter in the art history of 20th-century American painting and that was William Sommer, considered by many the most important artist of the Cleveland School,” the gallery notes.
Sommer’s Children features such works as Seated Boy, an oil painted around 1930, of a young boy in a deep green coat, situated in a dignified posture.
Also included in the show is the watercolor Girl in a Red Fez, circa 1941, in which a little girl wearing a fez sits on a wooden chair directly facing the viewer. Other pieces, painted in both oil and watercolor, feature children all with a similarly stern expression often associated with historic portraiture, but each with their own individual spirit. “Sommer had a unique and magical ability to capture the essence of each child,” says WOLFS Gallery founder and director Michael Wolf.
The exhibition will remain on view in the gallery through February 6, following all COVID-19 safety guidelines.■