"Winter" by George Daniell (1911-2002)
Watercolor on Paper
16 x 12 inches
Signed Daniell 001
Framed and Matted
About the Artist
George Daniell was born in Yonkers, New York in 1911. He trained as a painter at Yale, but pursued freelance commercial photography to support his family. He lived a double life: photographer shooting advertisements and documenting art collections during the day, and spending time at the bathhouses and gay bars in the city at night.
He took his camera with him on trips across the country and around the world. He photographed famous celebrities including Audrey Hepburn and Georgia O'Keefe. Daniell was in a forty-year relationship with the artist Stephen Dorland, until his death in 1983, after which his companion was Roy Oxley.
He is quoted in an interview saying, "When I take pictures, I am the camera." His photography was published in Time and Life from the 1930's through the 1960's, and many were used on the fronts of greeting cards.
Following a stroke soon after his first partner's death, Daniell could no longer travel as a commercial photographer. He returned to painting, but unlike his early oils which explored a dark palette and intense portraiture, he chose a more lively, abstract style. Much of his work shows a "tender, muscular celebration of the angular male figure." This is portrayed in his watercolors of nudes on a beach in our collection of his work available.
George Daniell passed away in 2002 from complications following a stroke.
Resources:
Anstead, Alicia. (2001, July 29) "ART/ARCHITECHTURE; At 90, Still In Pursuit of Beauty." New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/arts/art-architecture-at-90-still-in-pursuit-of-beauty.html