JOHN PHILIP FALTER (American 1910 - 1982). Young Astronaut, Saturday Evening Post cover, June 20, 1953. Oil on canvas. 2...

Description

JOHN PHILIP FALTER (American 1910 - 1982)
Young Astronaut, Saturday Evening Post cover, June 20, 1953
Oil on canvas
25 x 23.5 in.
Signed lower left
John Falter's riveting scene captures a tragicomic domestic crisis as it unfolds. Young Astronaut, created for the Post cover of June 20, 1953, captures the essence of childhood in the fifties with imagination and wit. To the horror of his family and neighbors, a precocious boy, playing the role of a homespun Icarus, is about to launch himself off the garage roof.

Falter incorporated portraits of his wife, Mary Elizabeth, and his daughter, Suzanne, in this painting. In the background, Falter included the actual water tower from his hometown, which he climbed as an adult "in order to see the world with an eagle's eye." In an article in the Winter 1971 issue of the Post, Falter referred to the tower as a talisman. "To the boy, the high structure was a tower of magic -- to the man, it is the magic of boyhood".

The 1953 Post's caption for This Week's Cover reads, "Little Harry Helicopter is now getting bawled out for being the only person in John Falter's picture exhibiting any signs of imagination, daring, enterprise, and inventive genius. If memory serves, people also used to counsel the Wright brothers to come right down from there and stop being silly. Wouldn't it be a charming twist if the inventor had something in that fuselage enabling him to fly straight up into the air? Anyway, instead of the lad's parents' being critical, they should admire his judgment in deciding not to take off from that water tower. By the way, who stove in pap's fender -- papa? If they'd let Harry drive, he could do better. Grandpa is saying, "Let Harry be! I used to jump farther than that. Without wings."

This piece, as well as several of the others by Falter, is being offered from the Estate of Jack Warner, a Philadelphia businessman and amateur painter who befriended Falter when he moved there in the seventies.

PROVENANCE:
Estate of Jack Warner



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