Day depicts the first participants of an artists’ poker game that has taken place on the first Sunday of every month since 1963. Seated clockwise from left are five Philadelphia artists: Armand Mednick, Dennis Leon, David Pease, Massimo Pierucci (mostly obscured), and Jimmy Lueders. The empty chair denotes Day’s place at the table. The painting is set in Lueders’s studio, with its roll-down garage door and red curtain. Day imbues the scene with portentous stillness, capturing the moment when the players contemplate how to respond to a bet being placed by Pease, who wears a white hat and blue jacket.
Born in Philadelphia, Day served in the Pacific campaign of World War II, after which he attended college on the GI Bill. He graduated from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in 1949, also earning a degree in education there. He began his career as an instructor shortly thereafter, primarily as an anchor figure in the Painting department of the Philadelphia College of Art (later the University of the Arts) and the graduate school of the University of Pennsylvania. His work is in numerous museum collections, including the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Woodmere.
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