Ethel M. Dean (1900 - 1976)

Impending Shadow, 1941, oil on canvas board, signed and dated lower right, 24 x 30 inches, exhibited: 32nd Annual Exhibition of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, February 12 – March 12, 1942 (label verso)

SOLD

Impending Shadow is a remarkable depiction of wartime America. Likely painted around the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and within a few years of the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Dean depicts the view from an airplane looking down on a stylized and idealized version of an American city, likely a suburb of Pittsburgh. From the aerial vantage point, she portrays the shadow of the plane moving across the surface of the composition heading toward the American flag flying above a school as people attend to their daily tasks from shopping to mowing the lawn. Although the dominant shadow in the work is of the passing airplane, another more subtle and sinister shadow begins to obscure the periphery of the painting, closing in from all sides and spotlighting the center of the picture as if it were a target. Dean's work presages the nearly four hard years of conflict the United States and its allies would soon face.

Ethel M. Dean was a Pittsburgh-based artist. A native of Indiana, Dean moved with her family to Pennsylvania by 1910. In 1918, she graduated from Pittsburgh’s Peabody High School. Dean’s profession in the 1940 census is noted as “Art Painter,” though she apparently also worked as a stenographer, clerk and secretary during the 1930s through the 1950s. Dean was a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, which hosted a positively reviewed solo exhibition of her work in 1939, a few years prior to Impending Shadow. She also exhibited at the organization’s annual group exhibitions at the Carnegie Institute in the 1930s and 1940s. Dean exhibited at Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1940. During this period, Dean's oeuvre focused on the American Scene. The 1948 Supplement to Mallet’s Index of Artists lists Dean as an illustrator with a New York address and notes that she was associated with the American Institute of Graphic Arts, also in New York. Dean is also listed in Who Was Who in American Art.