TitleSelf-Portrait as Saint Jerome
Artist
Paul Wonner
(1920 - 2008)
Date1969
MediumCasein and graphite
DimensionsSheet size: 17 × 14 in.
Mat size: 24 3/4 × 23 in.
SignedSigned in graphite on page of book: "Paul Wonner"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, October 16, 1996
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1996.17
Label TextMost closely allied with the Bay Area Figurative movement in the 1960s, Paul Wonner was a pioneer figurative painter along with his contemporaries Nathan Oliveira and Theophulis Brown, who took their cues from the slightly older artists Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and David Park. Wonner's early figure paintings and still lifes were extremely loose and full of expressive brushwork. While he painted many figure compositions, "Self-Portrait as Saint Jerome" is the artist's only self-portrait. It shows him as his alter-ego, Saint Jerome, patron saint of translators and librarians, often depicted with a skull.
