Salvador Corona Painted Blanket Chest, Mexico, circa 1940

Salvador Corona painted four-panel wooden floor screen created in his studio in Mexico circa 1938. This rare hand crafted multi medium room divider was the property of the daughter of one of Mexico's wealthiest families of the period, who married the head of an international railroad supply company in their Warren McArthur furnished apartment on Park Avenue. The custom designed Warren McArthur furniture was a gift of the Pullman Company. In the early 1950s she opened a shop in Boothbay, Maine and later on upper Lexington Avenue specializing in the crafts of Mexico. This may have been a wedding present to her from the artist, her family or a close friend. The screen shows a the harbor of 19th Century Acapulco with the major buildings with gold leaf tiled roofs, Spanish galleons in the bay, a whale spouting in the distance, birds, and silver leafed palm trees . The harbor scene is bordered in gilt painted cord. Within which are appliquéd cutout medallions of various local fish and air bubbles covered in tinfoil ,a new material in the 30s. The tinfoil is finely etched in a variety of intricate patterns. Some of the appliqués are glazed in gold. The reverse side of the screen is an ivory white back ground with vignettes from the Maximilian era of Mexico. The screen is in good condition with wear consistent with its age. Salvador Corona was born on his family's ranch Hacienda Mideras in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Corona’s family moved to Mexico City in 1903 when he was 8. He attended the New English College in Mexico and then crossed into a career in bull fighting entering the ring for the first time in 1913. In 1919 in Guadalajara he was gored and turned to painting. He was given his first painting lessons by fellow bullfighter Jose Jimenez. Corona’s painting career spanned many decades and diverse formats including murals, furniture and decorative household items. In 1939, the Mexican government invited him to exhibit a set of painted furniture at it's booth at the World’s Fair in New York City. There, it was presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a gift. Corona’s work attracted many famous patrons, including the Duchess of Windsor, Gary Cooper and writer Clare Booth Luce. Salvador Corona’s work featured many Spanish Colonial vignettes, and he became an authority on Spanish and French costumes of the 1800s, which are frequently depicted in his paintings. His favorite subjects often included Mexican Colonial criollos and Purepecha (Tarascan) Indians. Birds and other animals feature prominently in his work. His traditional self-developed folk art style images depicted pastoral colorful scenes of Maximilian era Mexico painted on white backgrounds. His work can be divided into three categories: a vice-regal era with European and Creole noblemen mixed with Indians; stylized landscapes of Patscuaro, Acapulco or the Canal of Santa Anita; and his iconographic Mexican Virgins...

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