Wright Auction

Robert Vickrey was a celebrated American painter renowned for his mastery of egg tempera, an ancient medium he helped revitalize in the 20th century. Born in Manhattan in 1926 into a family with deep New York roots, Vickrey studied at prestigious institutions, including Yale University and the Art Students League in New York, where he trained under artists Reginald Marsh and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Vickrey later returned to Yale to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts, refining his skills in egg tempera under the guidance of Lewis E. York. Vickrey's hauntingly surreal compositions often feature enigmatic scenes—bicycles casting elongated shadows, children at play, and solitary figures like nuns set against vividly painted brick walls—images that placed him in the tradition of Magic Realism.

Vickrey's career involved various prominent exhibitions and work as a TIME magazine cover illustrator during its Golden Age from the 1940s to the 1960s, including a notable 1961 portrait of J.D. Salinger. His distinctive style set him apart from other tempera artists like Andrew Wyeth and George Tooker, with a unique visual language defined by stippling, scumbling, and razor-scraping rather than classical blending techniques. Vickrey's paintings, such as Victoria's Mural (c. 1978) and Lanterns (1996), explore the nuances of childhood, creativity, and quiet wonder, combining technical precision with emotional depth. Vickrey also contributed to the field as an author, writing New Techniques in Egg Tempera (1973) and Robert Vickrey: Artist at Work (1979), both of which became important texts for students of the medium.

Throughout his life, Vickrey received significant recognition for his contributions to art. His works are held in major institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Corcoran Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In 2009, Vickrey was honored with the Gerard Manley Hopkins Award for Excellence in the Arts from Fairfield University in Connecticut, coinciding with a major retrospective and the publication of Robert Vickrey: The Magic of Realism by art historian Dr. Philip Eliasoph. Vickrey passed away in 2011 in Naples, Florida, leaving behind a body of work that continues to influence and inspire through its technical brilliance and dreamlike atmosphere.