McCoy, John W. (American, 1910-1989) "Yellow Dahlias." Watercolor. Signed lower left John W McCoy. Good condition. Coe Kerr Gallery Inc. sales receipt on reverse. The painting is from the East Hampton estate of E. Coe Kerr of Knoedler Galleries. Painting measures 22" x 30". Frame measures 32 " x 41". Included with the painting are photos of E. Coe Kerr and other gallery related material.

From Askart: John McCoy was born into a patriarchal family of businessmen, a tradition he determined to break to follow his passion for art. He became a friend of Andrew Wyeth at his father's Chadds Ford studio, and the two men liked and admired each other, and often painted together. A painter who embraces abstraction, realism, modernism, and tradition, John McCoy married N. C. Wyeth's daughter, Ann Wyeth, and, until his death in 1989, they lived near the Wyeth family home at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. In realist style, he painted the surrounding landscape and the coast of Maine where the family vacationed. From 1946 to 1961, he taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He earned a degree in Fine arts at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and later studied at the Beaux-Art-School in Fontainebleau, France, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia as well as with N.C. Wyeth. By the 1950s, McCoy had also developed an interest in the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock, and began experimenting with mixed media and pouring, dripping, and floating paint on canvas. The book, John McCoy, an American Painter, by Anna McCoy with commentary by Andrew Wyeth, tells of McCoy's struggle for an independent creative voice and his determination to reduce painting to its essence. The year 2001 had two major exhibitions of John McCoy's work: the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) and the Biggs Museum of American Art (Dover, Delaware).