Raphael Soyer (1899-1987)

Get a Soyer Certificate of Authenticity for your painting or a COA for your Boucher drawing or print.

For all your Soyer artworks you need a Certificate of Authenticity in order to sell, to insure or to donate for a tax deduction.

How to get a Soyer Certificate of Authenticity is easy. Just send us photos and dimensions and tell us what you know about the origin or history of your Soyer painting, drawing or print.

If you want to sell your Soyer painting, drawing or print use our selling services. We offer Soyer selling help, selling advice, private treaty sales and full brokerage.

We have been authenticating Soyer and issuing certificates of authenticity since 2002. We are recognized Soyer experts and Soyer certified appraisers. We issue COAs and appraisals for all Soyer artworks.

Our Soyer paintings, drawings and print authentications are accepted and respected worlwide.

Each COA is backed by in-depth research and analysis authentication reports.

The Soyer certificates of authenticity we issue are based on solid, reliable and fully referenced art investigations, authentication research, analytical work and forensic studies.

We are available to examine your Soyer painting, drawing or print anywhere in the world.

You will generally receive your certificates of authenticity and authentication report within two weeks. Some complicated cases with difficult to research Soyer paintings or drawings take longer.

Our clients include Soyer collectors, investors, tax authorities, insurance adjusters, appraisers, valuers, auctioneers, Federal agencies and many law firms.

We perform Raphael Soyer art authentication, appraisal, certificates of authenticity (COA), analysis, research, scientific tests, full art authentications. We will help you sell your Raphael Soyer or we will sell it for you.

Girl in Brown Jacket 1938

Girl in Brown Jacket 1938

Raphael Soyer was a Russian-born American painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Soyer was referred to as an American scene painter. He is identified as a Social Realist because of his interest in men and women viewed in contemporary settings which included the streets, subways, salons and artists’ studios of New York City, although he avoided subjects that were particularly critical of society. He also wrote several books on his life and art. His brothers Moses Soyer and Isaac Soyer were also painters.

The Model 1944

The Model 1944

Raphael Soyer and his identical twin brother, Moses, were born in Borisoglebsk, Tambov, a southern province of Russia in 1899. Their father, a Hebrew scholar, writer and teacher, raised his five children in an intellectual environment in which much emphasis was placed on academic and artistic pursuits. Due to Russian oppression, the Soyer family was forced to emigrate in 1912 to the United States, where they ultimately settled in the Bronx.

Roomates

Roomates

Raphael pursued his art education at the free schools of the Cooper Union where he met Chaim Gross, who became a lifelong friend from that time. He continued his studies at the National Academy of Design and, subsequently, at the Art Students League of New York. While there, he studied with Guy Pene du Bois and Boardman Robinson, taking up the gritty urban subjects of the Ashcan school. After his formal education ended, Soyer became associated with the Fourteenth Street School of painters that included Reginald Marsh, Isabel Bishop, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Peggy Bacon and, his teacher, Guy Pene du Bois. Soyer persistently investigated a number of themes – female nudes, portraits of friends and family, New York and, especially, its people – in his paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints. He was adamant in his belief in representational art and strongly opposed the dominant force of abstract art during late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Defending his position, he stated: “I choose to be a realist and a humanist in art.”

Working Girls Going Home 1937

Working Girls Going Home 1937

Beginning in the early 1930’s he showed regularly in the large annual and biennial American exhibitions of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He had a series of one – man shows in New York galleries and also worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project in the 1930’s.

Model with Bookcase 1938

Model with Bookcase 1938

Soyer’s teaching career began at the John Reed Club, New York, in 1930 and included stints at the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research and the National Academy. His work is in numerous museums including the Museum of Modern Art; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The New York Public Library, New York; Tel Aviv Museum, Israel; Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy and Los Angeles County Museum, California.

Model with Bookcase 1938

Model with Bookcase 1938

Still wondering about a Russian painting in your family collection? Contact us…it could be by Raphael Soyer.


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