Thornton Oakley (American/Pennsylvania, 1881-1953) , "Stretched Out, Basking in the Torrid Glare (Cajun Cotton)", oil on canvas, signed lower left, "Robert M. Hicklin, Jr. Inc.", conservation and exhibition labels with artist and title on backing board, 22 1/4 in. x 16 1/4 in., framed . Provenance: Robert M. Hicklin, Charleston, SC. Ill.: Oakley, Thornton. "Mississippi Sketches". Harper's. June, 1905: 449. Note: A professional illustrator, artist and writer, Thornton Oakley often wrote and illustrated content for many magazines, particularly relating to travel and industry. Oakley worked in graphite, pen and ink, and oil with a consistent clarity and attention to detail. His most accomplished works are paintings and drawings of city scenes that provide an emphasis on their industrial character, highlighting the urban landscapes’ massive size and strength of structures and materials. The work seen here displays the artist’s tendency to focus on a single figure centered in the foreground of a vertical scene of imposing structures and machinery in order to emphasize man’s relationship to industry. He once stated: “It is man, the workman, the tiny human being upon the street, who has conceived and wrought the giant frames of steel, the furnaces, the towering buildings. It is through his eyes that I have seen.” Published as part of an article in Harper’s Monthly Magazine written and illustrated by the artist in 1905, the setting of the rare oil painting offered here is perfectly described by Oakley: “It was New Orleans; it was the afternoon, and the hour was near for departure of the steamboat. The sun flamed down as though the sky were the open door of a furnace, and the levee quivered with the heat. To the right and to the left stretched a long vista of cotton bales, and beyond the rows of bales lay the packets, their smoke-stacks – tall and lean, ribbed with white and topped by bell-shaped grills of wrought iron – reaching up into the blue sky full of floating clouds.” Ref.: Oakley, Thornton. “Mississippi Sketches.” Harper’s. June, 1905: 447-455; Pfohl, Bailey. “Thornton Oakley.” Illustration History: Norman Rockwell Museum. www.illustrationhistory.org. Accessed Dec. 31, 2020