"Loadin' for Town" is the title of this painting by Ernest Fiene. It was created for the American Tobacco Company and used in their advertisements for Lucky Strikes cigarettes.

Ernest Fiene was just eighteen years old when he arrived in New York from his native Germany. The year was 1912, and what an exciting time that must have been for a young artist to begin to experience America!

The year following his arrival, 1913, has come to be known as a "watershed year," or a critically important time in the history of the twentieth century. It was then that the Woolworth Building in New York was completed, the Fox Trot became the national dance craze, and Henry Ford organized the first assembly line. America had embarked upon "the age of mass production."

Fiene fell in love with his adopted city of New York, and began to paint the changing scenes he saw around him. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1914, and a couple of years later began to attend classes at the Beaux Art Institute of Design. He joined the Student League of New York, an independent art school which boasted an alumni list of heavy hitters in the art world. Georgia O'Keefe was an alum. So was Winslow Homer.

It was while Ernest was studying at the Art Students League that he became interested in lithography. He began to experiment with the lithographic process. The process (from the Greek lithos, meaning stone, and graphein, meaning to write) was invented back in the late 1700s. Briefly, the process begins by drawing directly on a prepared limestone with a grease crayon. Then the artist applies a water-attracting chemical. An inked roller is passed over the stone. Well done lithography nicely reproduces the quality of the original drawing.

Ernest's first published lithographs date from the 1920s. His lithographed landscapes and city scenes received high acclaim throughout the United States. Ernest was at the forefront of American Art Deco, along with such famous artists as Rockwell Kent and Lynd Ward. Lithographs signed and numbered by Ernest Fiene are still fairly pricey. A 1933 example from an edition of fifty lithographs titled End of the El is priced at $1750. A lovely lithograph of a snow scene, made near Ernest's home in Southbury, Connecticut, signed and dated, was $535 on the internet. One of Ernest's last lithographs, printed in color, titled Evening, Fifth Avenue is a large piece, 22 x 18, an edition of fifty, signed and dated 1965, lists for $950.

Perhaps some of Ernest' s most famous works are his wonderful-oil paintings showing New York City as he  experienced it. In his paintings he documented such real-life events as the opening of the Holland Tunnel, the establishment of radio telephone service between New York and London, the first public showing of "talking pictures" and Charles Lindberg's solo transatlantic flight.

Ernest became a naturalized citizen in 1927, and for most of his career maintained a studio in New York City's East 55th Street. He was well aquatinted with the city's changing skyline. Some of his 1930s paintings reflect the changes. Some of the titles are Excavating for Radio City, Fall of Old Houses, Wrecking Brownstone Houses and Erecting New Buildings.

A writer in a 1937 copy of The Magazine of Art tells us,  "Without ever merely illustrating or stooping to sentimental narrative, Fiene imparts a poignancy to the rapid change and reconstruction of the life of the city."

During the 1930s Fiene was employed by the WPA's Federal Arts Project. He traveled the country in search of icons of the Machine Age. The oil refineries and steel plants of Pennsylvania held great interest for him and provided subject matter for both paintings and lithographs. Fiene, along with many other WPA artists, painted murals to decorate the walls of public buildings. A famous one that he painted is The History of the Needlecraft Industry. It was painted in 1938 and is located at the High School of Fashion and Industry on West 24th Street in New York. One scene depicts a devastating fire which ripped through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New. York City, killing 145 people trapped by doors which only opened inward. That tragedy had happened the year before Ernest arrived in America.

Ernest Fiene's work also appeared in many popular magazines as advertisements. His paintings and drawings appeared in ads for Maxwell House Coffee, Lucky Strike Cigarettes and DeBeer's Diamonds, among others.

Collections of Ernest Fiene's paintings and lithographs may be seen today at The Art Institute of Chicago, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum, The Museum of the City of New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Art and many more, as well as at art galleries across the country.

A recent perusal of the internet offered the following examples of available Ernest Fiene items, ranging from inexpensive prints to original oil paintings to signed and dated lithographs and assorted miscellaneous items:

A portrait of a woman- $7900.00

A WPA era painting; still life- $2500.00

1939 World's Fair lithograph- $74.95

Book by Ernest Fiene- "Complete Guide to Oil Painting" - $ 7.50

Maxwell House Coffee magazine ad- $9.99

Reproduction print of lithograph- "Corn Shuckers" - $14.95

1941 vintage print- "Cattle Roundup" - $9.97

1947 Lucky Strike ad- $9.99

Reproduction print of lithograph- "Winter Evening" - $8.50

DeBeers diamond ad- $8. 99

1940 Wild Flowers print- $24.99

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