Isidor Pop Wiener (American, 1885-1970) Painting. Title - Falcon in Cherry Tree with Chicks. Oil on canvas painting. Signed lower right, I. Wiener 1961. Acquired from the estate of Isidor”s son, renowned American photojournalist Dan Wiener or Weiner (1919-1959). The painting was acquired from Dan’s wife, Mary Delaney Cooke from East Hampton, New York. For some reason the family seems to have changed the spelling to Weiner in the past 50 or 60 years. Measures 16.3 inches high, 12 inches wide. Heavy gauge bronze conforming frame measures 16.7 inches high, 12.5 inches wide. In good condition.

The following is an excerpt from a review, by John Gernand, of a publication on the life and work of the New York folk artist, Isidor "Pop" Wiener: …. Now we meet "Pop" Wiener, a naive painter. Miss Bock first heard of him while studying in Cooperstown in the summer of 1969. … Isidor Wiener left Romania when he was seventeen while Russian pogroms against Jews were in effect. He landed in NY in 1903. He worked hard always, but when he retired at sixty-five, death had claimed two of his three sons and his beloved wife. The future seemed bleak. It was then that his remaining son, Dan, gave him a set of watercolors from the ten-cent store and asked him to paint. Nothing in Wiener's life had prepared him for painting. From the first brush stroke, however, he felt a thrill of joy. Evident in his art are overtones of embroideries and icons of his Romainian childhood. Delight in his adopted country is expressed in rural landscapes with many flowers and animals. There is rarely a cityscape…. All is here and now, with the important exception of his Biblical subjects. In them the quiet pastoral mood can change to an energetic rush, as in the little masterpiece, "Crossing the Red Sea," with Egyptians on horseback plunging into the water and the children of Israel standing saved on the opposite shore. Landscape is persistent in his work, often peopled with delightful small figures with large eyes like those in Assyrian bas-reliefs…. There is a "Noah's Ark" with a melange of birds and beasts, each particularized, the result of many visits to the zoo. "Daniel in the Lion's Den" shows a cage with a blue and white tiled floor and the lions showing only token ferocity. Roseate walls are folded back to frame the den. In several little pastoral scenes, color is so felicitous as to be melodic. "Pop" Wiener died in 1970 leaving behind works with his own amalgam of qualities that charm. His painting is worth getting to know. [Source: Book review by John Gernand, The American Historical Review, Volume 80, Issue 4, 1 October 1975, Pages 1058 / Book: Joanne Bock, Pop Wiener: Naive Painter,Amherst, 1974]