Theresa Bernstein (American, 1890-2002) Allen Street, 1943 Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches (63.5 x 76.2 cm) Signed lower right: Bernstein PROVENANCE: The artist; Joan Whalen Fine Art, New York; Martin B. and Edith A. Stein, acquired from the above; Gift to the present owner from the above. EXHIBITED: Joan Whalen Fine Art, New York, "Theresa Bernstein (1890-): An Early Modernist," April 25-June 10, 2000; Boca Raton Museum of Art, "Theresa Bernstein--An Early Modernist: Paintings from the Martin B. an Edith A. Stein Collection," Boca Raton, Florida," 2003. LITERATURE: Joan Whalen Fine Art, Theresa Bernstein (1890-): An Early Modernist, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2000, p. 22, 32, no. 31, illustrated; Boca Raton Museum of Art, Theresa Bernstein--An Early Modernist: Paintings from the Martin B. and Edith A. Stein Collection, exhibition catalogue, Boca Raton, Florida, 2003, pp. 10, 31, fig. 7, illustrated. "Of all the experimental currents available to young artists in the early twentieth century, [Theresa] Bernstein has most readily been identified with the New York Realists, and exhibited at the MacDowell Club in 1914 along with Robert Henri's group...Bernstein was philosophically closest to...Henri, whose aesthetic she readily grasped...For Henri, art and life were one and the same: an artistic philosophy, which emphasized the painter's personal reaction to everyday American life. "Although she never formally affiliated with that loose association of artists, their commitment to contemporary subject matter, celebration of life, and expressive style became her rallying cry...she became kind of a mythologizer of an American dream, one that valorizes community life such as Rogers Street, Gloucester, circa 1923, and Allen Street, 1943. In some ways, Bernstein was a Thornton Wilder of the canvas, whose communityscapes offer consoling and nostalgic images to viewers of the 21st century" (P.M. Burnham, Theresa Bernstein—An Early Modernist: Paintings from the Martin B. and Edith A. Stein Collection, Boca Raton, Florida, 2003, pp. 6-10). HID03101062020 © 2020 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved