173 The Changing of Horsepower

SOLD
Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2016 Apr 02 @ 13:32UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price 35,000.00 USD
Estimated at 70,000.00 - 100,000.00 USD
The Changing of Horsepower
Artist: Harvey, G.Date of Birth: b. 1933
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 24 x 36 inches
Signed: Signed lower right and dated 1985
Verso: ; Signed, titled and dated verso

Like so many of G. Harvey’s major paintings, surface nostalgia hides deeper irony—what is lost when something’s gained? This is often the question that G. Harvey’s paintings ask, and The Changing of Horsepower is no exception. Trolleys and flivvers in the background will soon displace—changing places with—the horses that dominate the foreground of the picture. Streetcar tracks, multistory buildings, electric lights and poles strung with wires symbolically trap the horses and rider in an inexorable web of modernity and progress.