"Into the Ring"

Signed lower right.

Paul Sample (1896 – 1974)

Kentucky-born Paul Sample was a landscape and genre painter as well as a teacher. He first studied at Dartmouth College where he was a heavyweight boxing champion and played on the football and basketball teams. After serving his country in World War I, Sample graduated from Dartmouth in 1921. Unfortunately, he shortly after ended up at the Veterans Bureau Hospital in Saranac Lake, New York, fighting tuberculosis. To ease the tedium, he experimented artistically, sketching with pencils and paints. Sample was discharged in 1926, before moving to California, where he studied with Jonas Lie and Stanton MacDonald Wright at the Otis Art League at the University of Southern California. He taught at the University of Southern California (1926-38) and Dartmouth College (1938-62). During World War II, he was a war art correspondent for Life Magazine.

Paul Sample exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1936 medal, 1941 medal prize); the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago (1930 prize); the Los Angeles County Art Museum (1930 prize, 1936 prize); the California Art Club (1930 prize, 1931 prize); the National Academy of Design (1931 prize, 1932 Gold Medal); the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Pasadena Art Institute (1932 prize); and the Carnegie Institute (1936 award).

Sample’s work is featured in many important collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the White House; and San Diego Fine Arts Society.

Sample said he was a “conservative painter.” His style varied from very illustrative, to a style echoing the Works Progress Administration (WPA) murals of Thomas Hart Benton. Sample spent considerable time in Philadelphia as he was commissioned to paint a Pennsylvania series for the John Wanamaker department stores.