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Paul Arlt
War's End, 1946
Painter and political cartoonist Paul Arlt was born in New York City and moved to Washington DC in 1934 where he established his career. At the onset of World War II, he helped build boats for the US Navy in Annapolis before joining the Marine Corps as a combat artist and correspondent. Arlt later received a Purple Heart for a foxhole injury. This painting, purchased from VMFA's fifth biennial exhibition, depicts the awful wreckage of fighter planes on a Japanese hillside, a rare subject in American art. The museum also owns a whimsical watercolor of the equestrian statue of JEB Stuart on Richmond's Monument Avenue, painted by Arlt at the age of seventy-nine. |