Archer, Robert P. (1905-?)

Archer grew up in Sea Cliff, NY, received his training at Yale University School of Fine Arts, and then worked in New York City during the 1930s as a commercial artist, placing works in publications like the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and This Week. Archer’s painting “Approaching Storm” was selected for two traveling exhibitions sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art: “Mystery and Sentiment” in 1940, and then “Romantic Painting in America” (1943-1944). During World War II, he was Art Director of the Army Education Program in the Philippines. After the war Archer, along with the marine artist Charles J. Lundgren, opened a studio in Roslyn, NY that combined exhibition space with evening art classes. 1 work at Smithsonian Museum of American Art. 4 more images at FAP.

 

Works in the New Deal Collection at GVCA by Robert Archer:

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The Checkerboard Cloth
The Checkerboard Cloth

Not rendered with perfectly accurate optics, Archer’s still life nevertheless is a creative study in perspective and visual planes. Upon a table covered by the eponymous checkboard-patterned cloth, a crystal decanter and copper teapot sit incongruously next to each other. They are doubled in a mirror, complicated by its beveled edge and angled walls “behind” our point of view; viewer and painter alike have been effaced from the reflections.

archerGVCA