(Cubist Interior)

Joseph Marsh Sheridan

This early Cubist composition by Modernist midwestern artist Joseph Marsh Sheridan appears to have been done in 1921, while studying at Beloit College in Wisconsin. The work is signed "J.M. Sheridan". His later, surrealist works were generally signed just "Joseph". The date of this work is partially obscured. Sheridan would often work using pastels and crayon, varnishing the surface after he finished so the work could be hung without using glass - like an oil painting.

Painter, muralist, ceramicist, and printmaker Joseph Marsh Sheridan - who often signed his works simply "Joseph" - was born in Quincy, Illinois on March 11, 1897, into a prominent local family whose pursuits included commercial and creative avenues. His father was the founder of the Quincy Tribune, his brother was a commerical artist, and various exended family members were painters, draughtsmen, and woodworkers. Before focusing on visual arts, Sheridan explored writing and theater, the latter being the vehicle which brought him to Beloit College in 1917. Upon graduating with his BA in 1922, he moved to New York with an aim for a career in theater, and while there he enrolled in night courses at the Art Students League as well as further studies in playwriting and acting at the University of New York and Columbia University.

In 1923 Sheridan returned to Quincy for a short time, taking a position as an English and Drama teacher in a public high school and drawing in his spare time. The following year he relocated to Roswell, New Mexico, where he taught English and Economics at the New Mexico Military Institute. No doubt his time in the state known for its artistic magnetism deeply impressed the multi-talented Sheridan, and by 1928 he had abandoned all pursuits besides the visual arts and moved to Chicago to attend the Art Institute. There he took refresher courses in drawing as well as muralism and painting, and in 1929 accepted a position as a drawing instructor at the University of Minnesota. He began exhibiting his work and won a money prize for a group of drawings entered into the 15th Annual Twin Cities Artists exhibition, as well as critical acclaim for a group of watercolors sent to the Chicago Institute of Art Watercolor Exhibition.

Sheridan's style found its stride after a pivotal 1931 visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, studying with acclaimed artists Hans Hoffman at the University of California, Berkeley, and with Alexander Archipenko at Mills College - after Archipenko secured a scholarship for Sheridan by commissioning a large tempera painting for the school. Sheridan established a studio in Berkeley and was soon exhibiting throughout the Bay Area, including major venues in San Francisco. Among these was a show at the Legion of Honor, where around seventy of his mixed media drawings were hung in 1932. His unique, stylized, Cubist-influenced imagery garnered comparisons to Lionel Feiniger as well as his mentors Hoffman, Archipenko, and John Norton, and inspired commissions for portraits of prominent people throughout the Bay. His work was received with great critial acclaim.

Among these accolades was a write up by the artist and art critic Glenn Wessels: "Joseph Sheridan is not just another abstractionist. He is one of the few painters in California who has approached closely to the goal of sound pictorial organization. Sheridan's drawings...are not pure abstraction. Indeed the relationship to subject matter is seldom lost, but the subject matter is seen in a rhythmic fashion. The silhouettes flow around form as solidly architectural as the bay bridge towers, and yet each drawing is deliberately balanced in two dimensions as well."