American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Note

Born in Bremen, Germany in 1832, Hermann Herzog enjoyed a reputation as one of the foremost landscape painters of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century America. Trained at the Düsseldorf Academy and, subsequently under the tutelage of Norwegian landscapist, Hans Frederick Gude, Herzog achieved commercial success early in his career, affording him an opportunity to travel extensively throughout Germany and Norway. The artist’s sketching trips instilled in him a passion not merely for travel, but for experiencing nature’s unspoiled beauty and diversity firsthand.

Attracted to a promise of paintable scenery, Herzog immigrated to the United States in the late 1860s, ultimately settling in Philadelphia. From there, he embarked upon a series of outdoor excursions, first to New England and then, from 1873-74, to Wyoming, Utah and the West Coast. Following in the footsteps of contemporaries Winslow Homer and George Inness, Herzog visited Florida multiple times from the mid-1890s to 1910—an almost two-decade span that has proven to be one of the most prolific of his career. The artist’s travels between Gainesville and the Gulf Coast resulted in more than 250 canvasses, the present lot among them. Rendered in fluid brushstrokes and with a sensitivity to light, atmosphere and the region’s distinctive flora and fauna, Near the Outlet of the Waccasassa River is an exemplar of this fertile period.