Today’s works of art is called the Bartender, and is by a contemporary Massachusetts artist named David Hatfield. Though most of Hatfield’s paintings are landscapes, he does do the occasional portrait, such as the Bartender, though I don’t know much about the painting apart from the fact that it was sold in July of 2007. Also, it was an oil painting and was 40 x 29.5 in. But who the model was or where, if anywhere, the bar was where it was painted remain mysteries.

Here’s part of Hatfield’s biography from the gallery where he exhibits his work, State of the Art Gallery:

David Hatfield showed early talent, creating his first painting in 1952. He received a BFA degree from Miami University, Ohio, and began his art career as an illustrator in New York City, completing studies at the School of Visual Arts and the Arts Student League before discovering the art colony in Rockport, Massachusetts and Hoosick Falls, New York. Here he devoted himself to his own work, painting outdoors, capturing the rural towns and farms in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts; the quaint seascapes and towns of Cape Ann; and picturesque cities of Europe. His sensitive portraits are much admired.

Mr. Hatfield continually paints outdoors, even in the cold of winter, creating large and small paintings in an impressionistic style, often including figures in the compositions. He states, “I am trying to create a rich painting in which each part is interesting in itself and becomes even richer in its relationship to every other part of the painting. This is a very difficult thing to do, which accounts for history’s few masterpieces and the beauty that these paintings possess. The shapes, forms, colors and subject matter all combine to form a complex and aesthetically pleasing unit”. He exhibits his work locally at State of the Art Gallery in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

You can see more of Hatfield’s work at the State of the Art Gallery and his American Gallery.