Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Born in Delaware, Ohio, Dunbar Dyson Beck completed coursework at Ohio Wesleyan and Northwestern Universities before earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Yale. During his last year there, he entered the national competition sponsored by the American Academy in Rome and was awarded the prestigious Rome Prize. This award afforded him the opportunity to closely study the paintings of European masters, as well as travel extensively and immerse himself in the region’s diverse cultures and artistic heritages. He later became a teacher at Yale University and worked as a muralist and architectural designer. His most prominent public commission was a mural for the lobby of the Radio City Music Hall. In the 1930s, the artist alternated his time between New York and California, but from 1942 on, lived exclusively in California.

Completed in 1936, The Lunch Break was inspired by a trip through the Connecticut countryside, during which Beck was struck by the scene of two workers lunching by the roadside. Presumably a study for a larger painting of the same subject that exists, the work shows the men as they are settling down for lunch: seated, the man to the left removes his boots, while the other, with his uneaten lunch opened before him, chugs from a canteen. In style and feeling, the painting is reminiscent of works by Thomas Hart Benton and Ben Shahn. The curved delineation of the landscape, appearing almost as if distorted by a lens, and the play of scale between the figures and the trees calls to mind the techniques of Benton; while the palette of darker, muted colors and the subject matter evokes the Social Realism of Shahn. Juxtaposed with the relatively realistic portrayal of the two men, the barren trees and uncanny darkness of the background ultimately endow the composition with a surrealistic sensibility.