Charles Rain was an American magic realist painter during the 20th century.[1]
| Charles Whedon Rain | |
| Birth Place: | Knoxville, Tennessee |
| Birth Date: | 1911 |
| Death Date: | 1985 |
| Death Place: | New York |
| Nationality: | American |
| Alma Mater: | School of the Art Institute of Chicago |
| Style: | Magic realism |
Charles Whedon Rain was born in 1911 in Knoxville, Tennessee.[2] He grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1931-1933, with fellow Nebraskan artist and friend Keith Martin. Rain would follow his studies with a year-long trip to Europe in 1934, where he traveled to Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, meeting several artists there, including Max Beckmann and Otto Dix.[3] Rain returned to the United States in 1935, settling in New York.
Charles Rain was a prominent member of the Magic Realists, a movement of American painters influenced by European trompe l'oeil and Surrealism. A 1942 exhibition by the Museum of Modern Art titled American Realists and Magic Realists featured paintings by Charles Rain, amongst other artists such as Andrew Wyeth and Peter Blume.[4] Rain also created costume designs for a ballet performed by the School of American Ballet. He died in New York in 1985.
In 1999, the Sheldon Museum of Art held a Magic Realism exhibition all about Charles Rain's artworks.[5]
In 2019, Charles Rain's costume designs for the ballet Yankee Clipper were featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art about Lincoln Kirstein, a co-founder of the New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet.
The Sheldon Museum of Art has a gallery named after Charles Rain, honoring the artist's large donation of his artworks and the Charles Rain and Charlotte Rain Koch Gallery Fund.[6]