The Gambler, Joe Johnson

ETHEL MYERS (1881-1960)
The Gambler, Joe Johnson, n.d.
bronze with brown patina
9 inches (22.9 cm.) high
Stamped with foundry mark (on the base): ROMAN BRONZE WORKS NY

Mae Ethel Klinck Myers (August 23, 1881 - May 24, 1960), better known as Ethel Myers, was a New York Realist artist and sculptor strongly influenced in her work by the goals of the Ashcan School and its leader and famous teacher, Robert Henri. Her earliest subjects for pictures involved her capturing the life of the Lower East Side as well as journeying to slums in other cities such as Boston. Her greatest fame came some years later, after her marriage to New York artist Jerome Myers, when she became known for her figurative bronze statuettes and figurines "with a quite uncommon sense of humor, and with more than this, a feeling for form and movement that gives them life and conviction."

A figurative sculptor and art activist in New York City, Ethel Myers is known for her caricature bronzes of city people, many of them in humorous poses. She exhibited nine of them in the 1913 Armory Show that introduced modernist art to America, and according to art historian Charlotte Rubinstein: "It is now clear that Myers was one of the most creative of the Americans who exhibited at the Armory Show." However, she married painter Jerome Myers, and subjegated her career to his, which meant she did not receive her deserved recognition during her lifetime.

"Her three powerfully expressed sculptured figurines impress this reviewer with the fact that she is worthy of a place alongside of Daumier, Meunier and Mahonri Young." - The Brooklyn Eagle, January 1913