Ben Shahn

Seventeen Magazine, New York (commissioned directly from the artist in 1948)

The Downtown Gallery, New York

Arthur Laurents, New York

Roland Auctions, New York, 2 June 2012, lot 423 (consigned by the Estate of the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

New York, Museum of Modern Art, The 28th Annual Exhibition of Advertising and Editorial Art of the Art Directors Club of New York, 1949, no. 191

New York, The Downtown Gallery, Ben Shahn: Exhibition of New Paintings and Drawings, 1949, no. 6

Marjorie B. Paradis, "August Fifteenth," Seventeen Magazine, issue 8, August 1948, pp. 114-15, illustrated

Cipe Pineles Golden, A Medal for Ben, New York 1958, n.p.

Donald Holden, "An Interview with Art Paul," American Artist, vol. 39, issue 394, May 1975, p. 35

Martha Scotford, Cipe Pineles: a Life of Design, New York 1999, p. 66, illustrated as a magazine spread

David Seith Raizman, A History of Modern Design, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 2004, p. 254

Commissioned by renowned art director Cipe Pineles for the August 1948 issue of Seventeen Magazine, Ben Shahn’s Tennis Court perfectly emphasizes the American artist’s commitment to public art and social realism. Remarking at a dinner celebrating the artist ten years later, Pineles provided the context for the work, the first story illustration Shahn supplied for the magazine: “It concerned a 14-year-old boy, a keen tennis player, who is ashamed of his mother because she is very pregnant, and he is determined to keep this fact from his friends. To do this he keeps them from using the family tennis court, which up to the time of the pregnancy had been the center of social activity” (Pineles Golden, A Medal for Ben, New York 1958, n.p.). Inspired by the story and producing the work over only three days, Shahn went against Pineles’ principal request that the boy and his friends be represented as teenagers. Instead, the vivid empty court exemplifies the poignant themes of introspection and isolation recurrent in Shahn’s oeuvre. 

Before Tennis Court, magazines typically gave specific commissions to an established roster of artists, but Shahn’s success forged a new path. Pineles wrote that the present work “opened the way for many more painters to work in the magazine, [and] made it easier for other publishers to open their pages to the work of non-commercial artists” (ibid., n.p.). Over twenty-five years later, Art Paul, the longtime Art Director of Playboy, described Tennis Court’s influence on his industry: “The art had such impact because in illustration you were always expected to have people–some romantic situation or some kind of macho adventure–something going on. But that empty tennis court made you want to get into that story. There was a reality in that picture. You knew this story had to be special” (Donald Holden, "An Interview with Art Paul," American Artist, vol. 39, issue 394, May 1975, p. 35).