Oscar Julius (1882-1965) American, Oil on Board with Salmagundi Club Label. Original frame. Depicting a fisherman holding a fish in one hand and a knife in the other. There is a sailboat and clouds in the background. It has a Salmagundi Club Label verso. From one of the thumb box exhibition. The thumb-box show received the name, ‘thumb-box,’ after the compact wooden paint box artists used to carry wet panels back to their studios. Salmagundi’s thumb-box shows began in 1908. Its permanent collection contains numerous thumb-box works, which enter the collection through purchase prizes or accessioned donations. This exhibition happens annually. Comes from a Important Cape Cod Collection

Overall Size: 16 1/4 x 14 1/2 in. 

Sight SIze: 9 x 7 in. 

#7321 . 

Oscar Julius began his art training at the Boston Museum School. Afterwards, he moved to New York to study at the National Academy of Design School and finally graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Julius painted in both watercolors and oils. He maintained memberships in many artists' associations, including the Society of Brooklyn Painters and Sculptors, the American Watercolor Society, and the Salmagundi Club and was a founding member of the Guild of American Painters, begun in 1921. In 1931, Julius won the important William Church Osborne Purchase Prize from the American Watercolor Society, which brought him considerable public and professional attention. Then in 1936, a series of his watercolors was shown in a one-man traveling national exhibition. Julius maintained a studio in Manasquan, New Jersey, and also opened a studio at Fifth Avenue on Long Beach Island near Barnegat Light in 1942.
The above was submitted to AskArt in August 2004 by Brenda Molloy Palley who found the information in the catalog of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Gallery Show.