Cello, Henry C. Meyer (American, 1916–1987), c. 1960s, color lithograph on paper, 12 × 10 in., pencil-signed lower right, numbered 159/190.
Artwork Description
A warm and intimately rendered portrait of a young girl absorbed in playing the cello, depicted in close-up against a vigorously brushed magenta and coral background that pulsates with color and energy. The figure dominates the composition — her dark hair pulled back with a blue headband, her face cast downward in quiet concentration, her patterned blouse rendered in deep teal and mustard gold creating a rich decorative surface against the hot pink ground.
The technical achievement of this lithograph is considerable. Meyer layers color with painterly confidence — the background is not flat but built from visible gestural strokes suggesting the spontaneity of direct painting, while the figure is rendered with far greater precision and delicacy. The girl's face, hands, and the cello's warm wooden body are drawn with sensitivity and restraint, creating a tonal counterpoint to the saturated expressionism of the background.
The cello itself is depicted with real knowledge — the grain of the wood rendered through careful tonal variation, the strings precisely defined, the curve of the instrument's body echoing the curve of the player's posture. The intimacy of the composition — the girl leaning into the instrument, her arm draped across its body, her hands positioned mid-bow — captures not a performance but a private moment of musical absorption.
The color relationship between the teal-and-gold patterned blouse, the warm reddish-brown cello body, and the hot pink background is characteristic of Meyer's lithographic palette — bold, decorative, and emotionally vivid without tipping into sentimentality. The double numbering "159/190" and pencil signature confirm this as an authentic hand-signed impression.
Artist Biography
Henry C. Meyer (1916–1987) was an American painter and lithographer whose work, though little known in institutional circles, represents a significant body of mid-century figurative printmaking rooted in the artistic culture of New York and its suburbs.
Born in 1916, Meyer attended Cooper Union in New York City and worked professionally as a textile designer in New York. Chairish His training at Cooper Union — one of America's most rigorous art and design schools — gave him a foundation in both fine art and applied design that is visible throughout his lithographic work: his compositions display a designer's sensitivity to color relationship, pattern, and decorative surface alongside a painter's instinct for figurative expression.
His lithographs were produced at what his family recalls as Larchmont Studios in Larchmont, New York, and he and his wife regularly exhibited and sold his prints and paintings at mall exhibitions across the region. Chairish This mode of distribution — bringing art directly to audiences outside the gallery system — places Meyer squarely within the world that Mitch Morse Gallery also inhabited: the mid-century democratization of original art through hotel shows, mall circuits, and direct-to-collector selling that characterized the most entrepreneurial figures of the American art market in the 1960s and 1970s.
Meyer's subjects centered on the human figure — musicians, children, moments of quiet domestic life — rendered with warmth and technical facility in a palette that balanced decorative boldness with genuine emotional sensitivity. His work appears in private collections and at auction, though a full critical reassessment remains to be written.
Henry C. Meyer died in 1987. His lithographs, produced in modest numbered editions, are among the more accomplished examples of mid-century American figurative printmaking outside the mainstream gallery circuit.
Cello, Henry C. Meyer (American, 1916–1987), c. 1960s, color lithograph on paper, 12 × 10 in., pencil-signed lower right, numbered 159/190.
Artwork Description
A warm and intimately rendered portrait of a young girl absorbed in playing the cello, depicted in close-up against a vigorously brushed magenta and coral background that pulsates with color and energy. The figure dominates the composition — her dark hair pulled back with a blue headband, her face cast downward in quiet concentration, her patterned blouse rendered in deep teal and mustard gold creating a rich decorative surface against the hot pink ground.
The technical achievement of this lithograph is considerable. Meyer layers color with painterly confidence — the background is not flat but built from visible gestural strokes suggesting the spontaneity of direct painting, while the figure is rendered with far greater precision and delicacy. The girl's face, hands, and the cello's warm wooden body are drawn with sensitivity and restraint, creating a tonal counterpoint to the saturated expressionism of the background.
The cello itself is depicted with real knowledge — the grain of the wood rendered through careful tonal variation, the strings precisely defined, the curve of the instrument's body echoing the curve of the player's posture. The intimacy of the composition — the girl leaning into the instrument, her arm draped across its body, her hands positioned mid-bow — captures not a performance but a private moment of musical absorption.
The color relationship between the teal-and-gold patterned blouse, the warm reddish-brown cello body, and the hot pink background is characteristic of Meyer's lithographic palette — bold, decorative, and emotionally vivid without tipping into sentimentality. The double numbering "159/190" and pencil signature confirm this as an authentic hand-signed impression.
Artist Biography
Henry C. Meyer (1916–1987) was an American painter and lithographer whose work, though little known in institutional circles, represents a significant body of mid-century figurative printmaking rooted in the artistic culture of New York and its suburbs.
Born in 1916, Meyer attended Cooper Union in New York City and worked professionally as a textile designer in New York. Chairish His training at Cooper Union — one of America's most rigorous art and design schools — gave him a foundation in both fine art and applied design that is visible throughout his lithographic work: his compositions display a designer's sensitivity to color relationship, pattern, and decorative surface alongside a painter's instinct for figurative expression.
His lithographs were produced at what his family recalls as Larchmont Studios in Larchmont, New York, and he and his wife regularly exhibited and sold his prints and paintings at mall exhibitions across the region. Chairish This mode of distribution — bringing art directly to audiences outside the gallery system — places Meyer squarely within the world that Mitch Morse Gallery also inhabited: the mid-century democratization of original art through hotel shows, mall circuits, and direct-to-collector selling that characterized the most entrepreneurial figures of the American art market in the 1960s and 1970s.
Meyer's subjects centered on the human figure — musicians, children, moments of quiet domestic life — rendered with warmth and technical facility in a palette that balanced decorative boldness with genuine emotional sensitivity. His work appears in private collections and at auction, though a full critical reassessment remains to be written.
Henry C. Meyer died in 1987. His lithographs, produced in modest numbered editions, are among the more accomplished examples of mid-century American figurative printmaking outside the mainstream gallery circuit.
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