"The Yellow Chair" aka "Prelude to Spring" by Ferdinand Earl Warren (MO/NY/GA, 1899-1981), oil on canvas, signed, titled on back, dated 1946, framed - 46" x 34"
 
Warren studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. He was an artist for the Kansas City Star Co. from 1918 to 1927. In 1924 he received a fellowship to study at the L.C. Tiffany Fellowship in Oyster Bay, Long Island and afterwards moved to New York where he studied at the Art Students League and at the Grand Central School of Art. During World War II he did war bond posters for the US Treasury Department. He had exhibitions at the Milch Galleries in 1946 and 1949. He was commissioned to paint the only posed portrait of Robert Frost. In 1971, he was chosen to paint the launching of Apollo 14 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He was president of the Georgia Association of the Arts and received the Governor's Arts Award in 1979. He received the Edwin Palmer prize from the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1962. Warren's paintings are displayed in the Truman Library, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Academy of Design, the University of Georgia in Athens, Agnes Scott College and the National Gallery of Arts in Washington. He was chairman of the art department at Agnes Scott College for 20 years, where he was instrumental in establishing the Dana Fine Arts Building.