21: PAUL MEYER PAINTING: GENERAL MOTORS F7 LOCOMOTIVE

Paul Meyer (Born 1910)
Alternate Depiction of The Diesel That Did It (1940)
The subject of this painting is an FT, General Motors' triumphant Diesel locomotive that persuaded most American railroads to switch from steam to Diesels. The original FT, a four-unit demonstrator that traveled nearly 84,000 miles to test its mettle against the railroads' best steam locomotives, used this exact paint design but the red stripes were yellow and a 'GM' was styled to fit in the V created by the dipping of the stripes on the nose. Nearly two dozen major American railroads bought FT locomotives and many had very imaginative color schemes, but it doesn't appear that any of them followed this pattern. Instead, most preferred to use much broader stripes on the nose in order to make the locomotives as visible as possible at grade crossings.

The colorful original rendering of this proposed color scheme is signed by Paul Meyer lower right front with date of 12-30-40. The original painting in medium of tempera with gouache embellishment is highlighted by an interesting depiction of the steel mesh side panels as seen in the last two images. The countryside landscape is depicted in a surreal airbrush technique.
Measures 18 x 23 inches.
Good, clean un-faded colors but with paint lifting in the red side bands and minor bits of paint loss.
Provenance: The Fred Roniger Estate Collection.
$500 - $5,000