At the Threshold of Brilliance: The Brief but Splendid Career of Harold J. Rabinovitz

A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, HAROLD J. RABINOVITZ (1915-1944) earned a fine arts degree from Yale in 1935, studied at the Art Students League in New York City and rose quickly to prominence in American art circles before his burgeoning career was cut short just nine years later by his untimely death while a Japanese prisoner of war during World War II. In the brief span of six years between his college graduation and enlistment in the U.S. Army, the award-winning artist exhibited at the nation’s leading museums (including the Carnegie, Whitney, Corcoran, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and National Academy of Design) as well as the 1939 World’s Fair. Although a major retrospective of the artist’s work was staged in 1952, Rabinovitz, like so many of the neglected generation of American realist painters of the Great Depression, has since faded into relative obscurity in art historical circles. Based on eight years of research and aided immeasurably by the discovery of a family scrapbook and a treasure trove of paintings, prints and drawings hidden from public view for more than sixty years, this biography and catalogue raisonne of the artist’s production seeks to restore the reputation and reveal once more the genius of a talented artist whose tragic wartime death ended a highly promising artistic career.