Robert Pearson Lawrence (American, 1883-1970), Little Main Street

Oil on canvas board, 1949, signed and dated at lower left, inscribed by the artist to the verso "TO AILSIE / JUST BECAUSE YOU LIKED IT / TO HAVE AND TO HOLD OR TO GIVE / AWAY. JULY 1949 / BOB," presented in a period frame.

Canvas board 12 x 16 in.; Frame dimensions 15 3/4 x 19 5/8 in.

By descent through the family of Robert Lawrence, Tryon, North Carolina

Robert Pearson Lawrence was born in Setauket, New York. He studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, the Art Students League in New York City, and the Woodstock colony in the Catskills. Lawrence became a magazine illustrator, though his oil paintings were exhibited at the Hudson Valley Art Association, Westchester Arts & Crafts, and the Salmagundi Club. He joined the Salmagundi in New York City as an artist member in 1934. During World War II, he volunteered as a USO artist and executed portraits of wounded American soldiers.

In the 1950s Lawrence settled in Tryon, North Carolina, and joined the artist colony there, where he pursued landscape painting for more than two decades. He became well-known for his oil paintings of the area's scenery. A one-man exhibition of his work was held in Tryon in 1961. Several of his paintings can be found in Tryon institutions, and he was an early member of the artists' guild in nearby Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Light surface grime; overall in good estate condition.