New York, NY (1888PressRelease)
May 10, 2008 - An original painting entitled "Custer's Last Stand", created by famous historical painter and muralist Alton S. Tobey (1914-2005) will be auctioned in an American Paintings sale at a well-known international auction house at their New York City sales room on Wednesday, May 21, 2008. "Custer's Last Stand", an oil on canvas measuring 15-1/2 x 16-1/2 inches, was created by Tobey for the 12-volume series The Golden Books History of the United States in 1962. Details on the sale, the previews schedule and pre-sale estimates are available from a link on Tobey's web site to the auction from his home page at www.altontobey.org.
Alton Tobey received his BFA and MFA from the Yale University School of Fine Arts, where he taught there and in other schools and privately for a number of years before becoming recognized for his research talents in History and Anthropology. Soon after this, he created a number of murals for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, for the Land, Sea, Air and Space Museum aboad the USS Intrepid in New York City, for The MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, VA and executed a dozen more murals in public memorials throughout the US and abroad.
His paintings are in the collections of The National Museum of American Illustraton, Newport RI; The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford CT; The NY Historical Society and The Museum of The City of NY and dozens of other important public and private collections. He has had one-man and group shows all over the United States, in South and Central America, Europe and Asia.
In addition to his portraits of famous people and his historical murals, Tobey worked as an illustrator. In addition to over 300 paintings done for The Golden Books, his art was extesively reproduced in LIFE magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Readers Digest, and many other periodicals and books including The Iconography of Antonio Stradivari, Man and Power, Epic of Man, Birds of Tikal and others, as well as on collectible items for Royal Doulton, Lucien Picard, Scafa Tournabene, and for other US and foreign companies.
One of Tobey's most famous paintings, A Tribute to Calder, a portrait of Alexander Calder, the artist famous for his geometric mobiles whom Tobey admired greatly, was recently shown at a meeting of the Calder Foundation at the National Arts Club in New York, and a 20-page profusely illustrated feature article on Tobey and his work appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Illustration magazine. A copy of the article is also available from a link on Tobey's home page at www.altontobey.org.
Anyone interested in more information on Tobey and his work can contact the Curator of the Alton Tobey Collection by email to curator ( @ ) altontobey dot org or by phone to 212-260-9240.
