Stephen Bagnell (1930 – 1996)

“The Fish Monger”

Oil on artist board

48” x 46” unframed

55.5” x 53.5” framed

Signed top right

Framed in Mid Century Frame

Provenance:

New Jersey Estate

This wonderful Genre in the Modernist style made famous in the mid-20^th Century.    A pair of women selling fish at the market.

The terms modernism and modern art are generally used to describe the succession of art movements that critics and historians have identified since the realism of Gustav Courbet and culminating in abstract art and its developments in the 1960s.

Although many different styles are encompassed by the term, there are certain underlying principles that define modernist art: A rejection of history and conservative values (such as realistic depiction of subjects); innovation and experimentation with form (the shapes, colours and lines that make up the work) with a tendency to abstraction; and an emphasis on materials, techniques and processes.

Modernism has also been driven by various social and political agendas. These were often utopian, and modernism was in general associated with ideal visions of human life and society and a belief in progress.

By the 1960s modernism had become a dominant idea of art, and a particularly narrow theory of modernist painting had been formulated by the highly influential American critic Clement Greenberg. A reaction then took place which was quickly identified as postmodernism.

BIO:

Stephen Bagnell was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, January 4, 1930.  As a young man he dreamed of becoming a cartoonist.  Growing up in a tumultuous family, however, he put his dream on hold and instead ran away.  Lying about his age, he joined the the Army at the age of 16.

The stint in the Army provided him with a government sponsored education of his choosing.  He selected the Art Students League of New York City, and became interested in pursuing the fine arts.

He met and married Joyce Mahon at the age of 18 and became a parent at 20 years of age.  Soon life became a struggle.  During those years, Stephen worked as a house painter, spending all his spare hours painting, eventually finding his own particular style.

He with his family, lived in Bergen and Monmouth County, New Jersey and eventually moved to Columbia County, Pennsylvania where he made his home for 24 years.  His artwork was generally sold in the New York, New Jersey area.

Stephen Bagnell’s work is often dark with many of his endless subjects disfigured and disturbing; his landscapes are luminous. When he did paint in pastels, the results were subtle yet vibrant.  In all of his work there is a feeling of familiarity; as if you know the person, know the place.

Stephen painted only from imagination. His inspiration came from people he would see or a place he would recall, with his moods often reflected in the work.  He was not one to paint portraits or to paint from a photograph, but instead had an ability to remember the nuances of a subject.

He worked in many mediums; oils and acrylics being his favorite.  Over his lifetime he produced a considerable amount of sculptures as well.  Early on working in marble, experimenting in plaster, with wood and clay eventually being his mainstay.
He spent all of his waking hours for most his adult life on his artwork; he died Feb. 7, 1996 at the age of 66.