1960's mass produced art (kitsch, bad art) (century, day, painters)

[LargeKingCat]

Well, I am posting here because I am hitting dead ends, and need to appeal to the memory of some of the other members.

When I was a very small child, we took our weekly trip to the local supermarket. THis one particular Saturday, for "One Week Only" as I recalled (although I think it was longer) The store had a display of framed, mass produced oil paintings off to one side. My parents bought a piece, which came in a box with a number printed on the end. When we got home my dad opened it and said "Oh it's the wrong one!" But kept it anyway.
The paintings were not original starving artist pieces. They were mass produced on boards and framed ready to hang. I can find NO TRACES online of the one we had, and no info on the company or distributor of the time. Most were still lifes and landscapes, but I recall wanting a colorful circus/clown piece which I did not get.
So we will start with, does anyone remember this, or have any memory of a piece of artwork that came from this genre, and any info or leads will be appreciated.
I spoke with my mom about it, she does remember the event, but no details.

Again, in spite of the fact that these items MUST have been inexpensive (or my parents would not have bought it) and the apparent abundance of the item, I can find no copy of it online.

[baileyvpotter]

What area? Many grocery stores had various promotions i.e., glassware, silverware, dinnerware, toys, tricycles but
I never saw any mass produced art where I lived.

[LargeKingCat]

This was in Texas, late 60's. I am thinking 67 or 68

I know we were given a mass produced framed rembrandt self portrait, again it was a repro printed on illustrarion board, even had a "varnish" Type finish
My grandfather had bought it, he claimed, at the grocery store, "They had paintings once week only"

THis, in a town 200 miles away but still in Texas.

[Restrain]

Some of this stuff was even give if you had so many 'points' on a punch card, like the dish of the week.

[KL Whittaker]

I absolutely remember these in our Jewel grocery store in Chicago. We had some and I remember them in friends’ homes as well. I think I remember the Rembrandt, too. Anyway, it didn’t surprise me to see it.
I don’t think you saved stamps or anything to buy them but I think they were advertised as costing X amount but cheaper with a purchase of X $. But I could be mistaken about that. I remember a display where you could choose what you liked. There were different styles but they were printed on cardboard and the “paintings” had a fake brush strike swirl. They were framed pretty decently, too.
Actually, I found this thread by googling “Turner grocery store art” because someone was trying to identify something she just bought in a thrift shop and it reminder me of these. She’s much younger so I was trying to help her out.
Anyway, I bought a pair just for the nostalgia at a garage sale several years ago and if I could figure out how to add a picture of them and the label on the back, I certainly would. It reads “This is a TURNER Wall Accessory.....” “REORDER FROM TMC-CHICAGO” and gives code numbers for the item, picture and subject.
Hope this confirms your memory!

[banjomike]

There are still factories that mass produce original oil paintings.

They are done by human hands using an assembly line; at the front of the line are workers who stretch canvas on stretcher bars to size, followed by people who prime the canvas, and then followed by people who all do part of the artwork.

The artwork usually falls into just a few categories: landscapes and still lifes dominate, but there are fewer pictures of things like auto and other sports, cutesy pictures of animals and little children, and other stuff.

The painters don't ever paint an entire picture. The least experienced usually are the ones who rough in backgrounds, followed by better painters who paint in the other stuff, and at the end of the line, the best painters only add the details to pull it all together.

They are all given a certain number of picture sizes to paint, along with directions as to what is to be painted. The larger the picture, the more it costs. The smaller, cheaper pictures typically have far less detail in them.

So, in most instances, any signature that's found on one of these paintings is either fictitious or is the very last person's name, and that person only slapped on a few final touches. One of these paintings takes less than 15 minutes to finish a large painting, and as many as 6 different people could have put paint on the canvas.

It's contract work done by piece, not hourly wage in most of the factories, so the painting happens very quickly.

There are also a lot of single painters who specialize in these pictures. They typically work the same way, more or less, by starting with a rough background wash of color on 6 canvases or more, and then go back to #1 as soon as #6 is finished, and repeat the process, adding details as they go.

They're often called snappers or boomers by the locals, as they tend to follow the seasons and the tourists. Many will set up on a beach, in a park, or anywhere they can draw a crowd, as they keep up a line of patter while they paint. Anyone who stays long enough can get a painting made to order, more or less, if they want a fast landscape.

Since all the canvases are pre-made to fit frames, a tourist can usually select the frame desired, and the frames are a good way to add a few bucks onto the sale if a fancy one is selected.

The basic technique used is called wet-on-wet. Each color and detail is added before the layer below has dried. This actually can speed up any painting once it's mastered and used properly.

The technique goes all the way back to the old Dutch masters who developed it in the 16th century. Oil paint itself is even older, but was first used like water-based paints, applied in thin washes that dried quickly, and were glazed over wash by wash until the picture was completed.
It's no wonder than Rembrandt's works are so often displayed as prints alongside real wet-on-wet paintings. Rembrandt was one of the earliest masters of that technique, and it allowed him to paint his huge canvases. Up until then, all oil paintings were much smaller because the old traditional methods couldn't be used on such large scale. Rembrandt was at first notorious and controversial, but by his death had become widely imitated. Nothing changes the art world as fast as success.

In a painting factory, the finished pictures are all sent through an oven and force-dried until they're dry enough to handle and pack for shipment.

Since the paintings could be purchased in bulk by anyone who wanted to sell them in a retail setting, trying to find out who painted the one your parents bought, LargeKingCat, is next to impossible.

It could have come from a local deal with a local furniture store as a promotion, from a grocery wholesaler who bought a truckload of them to sell to his retail clients, or even from a jobber who specializes in selling them and travels around the country with a truckload of paintings.
Druggists, car dealers, auction houses, and many other places all bought these paintings as promotions to get customers to come in the doors. Civic groups like the Rotary bought them to sell for financing their civil projects, and hotel/motel owners bought them by the hundreds to furnish their rooms with. Some of the factories had their own reps traveling around, setting up art shows at a motel and selling them directly to the public.

One very famous snapper was Bob Ross. He was born in Daytona Beach, a snapper's paradise, but actually learned how to paint while he was in the Air Force. While on duty in Alaska, he turned to painting as an off-duty pastime, took some instruction there, and learned how to paint fast from Bill Alexander, another snapper who had an early TV series that displayed how to do it.

After he retired from the Air Force after 20 years, he joined Alexander. who by then had an art supply business selling paint and supplies. Alexander needed guys like Ross as traveling salesmen /tutors to sell his wares.

Ross' soft, soothing style of presentation impressed a lady who thought he ought to go out on his own, and was willing to invest her life savings in Ross. He was convinced to grow his military crew cut out and get the long hair permed, something he was never comfortable with, but his hair became so famous he stuck with the look.

In the end, Ross became far more famous (and wealthier) than Bill Alexander. His show on PBS never actually made him very much money, but it sold millions of his instructional videos, his brushes, and his art supplies. And they were all actually quite good products.

Ross was also one of the best snappers ever. His show still airs on PBS, and if someone watches Ross at work with the sound turned off, it's very apparent how fast, assured, and good Ross was doing what he did. Before his death, Ross once modestly estimated he had painted about 30,000 paintings by then.

I always got a big kick watching Bob. His soothing calm manner was natural; he wasn't faking it, and if a stone beginner actually bought some of his instructional videos, with enough hard work and practice, a person could learn to paint like Bob. But most could never paint as well, no matter how hard they tried.

Bob was no Rembrandt, but he was pretty darned good at painting mountains. And happy little trees.

[Kayekaye]

I was approached by a smaller mass producer and shown how they made all the hand painted art.
They had several long lunch tables lined up together and unrolled the canvas over them.

Then primed them all

Then took a yardstick and quickly dragged and drew up all the dimensions in the gesso: the long over the couch size, then all the standard sizes, 24 x 36, 16 x 20, 11 x 17, 8 x 10, 5 x 7 with stretching room around each one. Over and over until the long canvas was filled up.

Then they painted in a background color on all the sizes. Then a distant mountain on all the sizes, then a distant cloud on all the sizes, then a closer object on all sizes. Etc etc until it was all done. All sizes at once.

Then let them dry. Stacked them up. Then stapled to the stretchers.

I turned it down and never worked for them. But it was very interesting to watch them kick out those paintings. And people were thrilled that they were “hand painted”.