Oil on Canvas, 54 x 50 in., signed: O’Sickey 02 lower left

Union Club Foundation

Gift of Jeanette and Jack Walton

[Biographical Commentary courtesy of Wolf’s Art Gallery] Joseph O'Sickey, born in Detroit in 1918, had been a painter and teacher throughout his career.  As a child he attended Saturday classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which retains one of his paintings in its permanent collection, and the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he received a Bachelor's degree in 1940.  

He graduated from the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) in 1940 and taught at Ohio State University (1946-47), Akron Art Institute (1949-52), Western Reserve University School of Architecture (1956-64), and Kent State University (1964-89). 

Among the most honored painters active in the region, O'Sickey won the Cleveland Arts Prize in Visual Arts in 1974, and was called "a dean of painting in Northeast Ohio" by Steven Litt, art and architecture critic of the Plain Dealer. 

However, his work continued to develop through his 20s, strongly influenced by post-impressionism. 

O'Sickey's work is also in the collections of the Union Club Foundation, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Canton Museum of Art, Ohio; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; and Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia