Pastoral landscape painting with well-dressed women sitting under a large tree. The work is signed by the artist in the left bottom corner. The canvas is framed in a gold frame.

Joseph Tomanek, a painter active mainly in Indiana and Illinois, was born on a farm in Straznice, Czechoslovakia (in Southeastern Moravia) on April 16, 1889 and died in 1974. irst he studied the rudiments of art at the School of Design in Prague, then emigrated to America, partly to escape three years of military service, and arrived in Chicago in 1910. His actual profession was interior designer but he took more art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago under a compatriot, Antonin Sterba (1875-1963), who had been trained in the Paris academies. Albert Krehbiel and Karl Buehr were Tomanek's other teachers at the AIC. Between 1919 and 1931, Tomanek exhibited works at the Art Institute, including Cornfield, Bohemian Costume Study, Gypsy and From My Studio Window (Vanderpoel Art Association, Chicago). In 1938 Tomanek won the Logan Prize at the Art Institute of Chicago for Thoughts of the Future, a half-length nude strumming a guitar, which recalled the Salon days of Cabanel and Bouguereau for Peyton Boswell (Art Digest, 1 October 1938). Tomanek was one of the artists enrolled in the Illinois Art Project, 1935-1943. The Indianapolis Museum of Art has his painting called Milking Time.

H 26.5 in. x W 22.5 in. x D 2 in.

H 20 in x W 16 in.