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Bird Watcher

Artist John Graham (American, 1881–1961)
Title Bird Watcher
Date 1941
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions Overall: 25 1/4 x 20 1/4 in. (64.1 x 51.4 cm)
Framed: 26 1/4 × 21 1/4 in. (66.7 × 54 cm)
Credit Line Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 69.86.3

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About this Work

Born to a family of Polish aristocrats living in Russia, John Graham (born Ivan Dambrowsky) initially encountered modernist art at the home of Sergei Shchukin, an important Moscow collector. Fleeing the Russian Revolution, Graham immigrated to the United States in 1920. Here, he became a crucial link between modernist artists in Paris and New York. His own paintings reflect numerous stylistic influences, from abstraction and Cubism to realism and neoclassicism. Bird Watcher, a cubistic portrait of sorts, contains a sense of the fantastic or mysterious that also aligns it with Surrealism.


Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Bird Watcher | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=69.86.3