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<\/a><\/p>\nHeld made Jazz Age icons out of bobbed-hair flappers, college guys in raccoon coats, sporty women wielding tennis rackets, and tuxedoed partygoers dangling cigarette holders from their lips.<\/p>\n
His gently satirical drawings depicting a carefree and exuberant era appeared on dozens of national magazine covers<\/a> as well as inside periodicals and newspapers. His distinct style of work even made it to the book jacket of F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s Tales of the Jazz Age. <\/p>\n Then came the stock market crash. Held turned 40 in 1929, lost a lot of money, suffered a nervous breakdown, and found that his once-constant and highly lucrative artwork commissions had mostly dried up. <\/p>\n He was now free to do what he came to New York in 1912 for<\/a>: to pursue the fine arts and become a watercolor painter. <\/p>\n In the Depression of the 1930s, when the city\u2019s new skyscrapers might look to some like tall gray husks, Held depicted them as magical and luminous\u2014radiant under the lavender, pink, blueish-white skies of dawn and dusk. <\/p>\n They\u2019re a radical departure from his work a decade earlier, which featured stylish youth drawn in exaggerated angular proportions that suggest motion and energy. His watercolors, on the other hand, depict no people at all.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom 1934-1936, Held\u2019s view of the world turned more sober,\u201d states the art website Arthur<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n