After Work and Before Supper, 1939

Artist: Philip Tipperman (American, 1916 -1969)

Oil on canvas board, 16 x 20 inches

Gift of Tipperman Family

The Brooklyn College Library Collection

In this painting, Tipperman uses a distorted aerial perspective to focus on a sleeping worker depicted in the relative comfort of his working-class home. A steam-heat radiator, a cast aside pipe, a wooden chair, a standing lamp, a rumpled rug, and a single bed with visible mattress springs suggest a working-class environment.

Tipperman in his own very unique way, is at once offering us images that are misshapen and distorted and yet also charming detailed shapes and forms that often appear quite beautiful.

The viewer is able to palpably understand the effort required to maintain this man’s modest lifestyle. The angles of his body are twisted and misshapen suggesting discomfort. We share in his extreme sense of exhaustion, still in work clothes with shoes off, belt unbuckled curvaceously like a snake, tie pulled down, and shirt unbuttoned as he briefly naps before his supper. Perhaps dreaming of an easier life.