Painting from 1944 World Series Unearthed at Boston Museum

“Saturday Afternoon At Sportsman’s Park,” oil 1945

We at the St. Louis Browns fan club were not aware of a critically acclaimed oil painting having been done around the scene(s) of the 1944 World Series, the subway series between the Browns and the Cardinals.

But same came to our attention courtesy of the Boston Globe, which ran a feature concerning the new “The Art of Baseball” exhibit at the Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts.

The painting is by Edward Laning and is entitled “Saturday Afternoon At Sportsman’s Park”. According to the Globe article, it depicts Game 4 of the World Series, played October 7, 1944. (The Browns went into that tilt leading the series two games to one).

Laning, who died in 1981, is a renowned mural painter whose works are still prominent in many public buildings around the country.

“The Art of Baseball” opens this Friday (April 17)* and runs through Sept. 20.  Doris Kearns Goodwin is honorary curator of the exhibit.

Perhaps Laning's most famous work is The Role of the Immigrant in the Industrial Development of America which hangs in the Aliens’ Dining Room at Ellis Island.

Laning was part of an art school called the Fourteenth Street school.  Laning and the Fourteenth Streeters occupied a peculiar role among their peers. While their subjects were distinctly contemporary, their style was proudly anachronistic: they drew inspiration from European masters like Rubens, Veronese, and Tintoretto. During a trip to Europe in 1929, Laning was taken by the work of Rubens, one of Miller’s favorites.

Laning was born and raised not too far from Sportsman's Park.  He was from Petersburg, Illinois in Menard County.  It is not known whether Laning was a Browns or Cardinals rooter .. or even a Cubs fan.

The Boston Globe article about the exhibit opening is here.

* April 17 is also the beginning of a three-day week-end homestand in Boston against the Baltimore Orioles, the successors of the St. Louis Browns.   Hopefully, more than a few Brownie/Orioles fans in town to root on their beloved O's will take in the exhibit this weekend in Beantown.