Homer Costello (1899-1977) American, Oil on Canvas Street Scene

Lot description

Homer Costello (1899-1977) American, Oil on Canvas Street Scene. Stark image of several figures walking through the streets of a village under a bright but cloudy sky. Signed bottom right. Condition: Holes in canvas. Craquelure damage to oil throughout. Overall fair. Overall Size: 22 3/4 x 47 in. Sight Size: 15 1/2 x 39 1/4 in. Frame Thickness: 2 in. Homer Costello was born in 1899 in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he lived nearly his entire life. The child of Irish immigrant parents, he briefly served in the Army in World War I, where he was exposed to art for the first time while stationed in Europe. When he returned to America he traveled by foot along the eastern Gulf Coast while teaching himself to paint, hitching rides in carts and on boats until he arrived in Cedar Key, Florida in 1923, where he sold all the paintings he had made along the route. Using that money he bought his own boat and returned to New Orleans to care for his ailing parents, and married Margaret Satterley the next year. He worked first as a charter fisherman and then as a handyman for the next fifty years while continuing to paint in a post-Impressionist style. His autodidactic works, often juxtaposing small figures in a wide landscape or dwarfed by towering buildings, indicates a fascination with alienation and ones place in the world, likely influenced by the jarring differences he experienced between his lifelong home and the sprawling metropolises of Europe. He passed away in 1977.