The paintings of American artist Philip Evergood (1901-1973), especially those executed during the 1930s, reveal his concern for social causes; although realistic, they are also marked by elements of fantasy.

Philip Evergood, whose real name was Philip Blashki, was born in New York City on October 26, 1901. He was the son of an unsuccessful Polish painter who had come to America from Australia. After attending boarding schools in England, Blashki graduated from Eton in 1919. He changed his name to Evergood because British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had written that Anglo-Saxons were full of prejudice. When Evergood discovered that he wanted to be an artist, he left Cambridge University to study drawing under Henry Tonks, head of the Slade School of Fine Art, London.

In 1923 Evergood returned to America, where he studied with George Luks at the Art Students League in New York City, and then went to Paris, where...