Edith Lucille Howard (American, 1885–1960) Cypresses of Garda, Italy

Exhibited

Art Club of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 6-26, 1933.
Reading Museum of Art, Reading, Pennsylvania, March 10-April 14, 1935.
Denbigh Hall, Wilmington, Delaware, 1935.
"The Philadelphia Ten on the Road: The Rotary Exhibit," The Demuth Museum, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, September 6-November 2, 2008.

Literature

Public Ledger, Philadelphia, January 14, 1934 (illustrated).
Page Talbott and Patricia Tanis Sydney, The Philadelphia Ten: A Woman's Artist Group 1917-1945, Galleries at Moore and American Art Review Press, Philadelphia and Kansas City, 1998, p. 127, pl. 57 (illustrated p. 104).
Anne M. Lampe et al., The Philadelphia Ten on the Road: The Rotary Exhibit, The Demuth Museum, Lancaster, 2008, p. 7 (illustrated on the cover (detail) and inside left cover).

Note

Born in Bellow Falls, Vermont, Edith Lucile Howard spent much of her career abroad, reportedly crossing the Atlantic Ocean more than thirty times over the course of her life. She painted landscapes in all parts of Ireland (the mysterious and hilly country captured her heard and artistic fancy), as well as in Belgium, France (and especially Normandie, where Mont Saint-Michel became her favorite subject). The present view of Lake Garda is one of several paintings Howard executed while in Northern Italy in the 1920s, and to feature cypresses, whose elongated and poetic forms seemed to captivate the artist. Bold in execution, the work surprises by its rich and vigorous impasto, which speaks for the artist's enchantment and trepidation as she stood before this splendid view. Iridescent blues, shimmering pinks and golds permeate the canvas, in true Howard fashion, as the artist was praised for the vibrancy of her color palette, and the tapestry effect she imbued in each of her canvases, thus adding a certain etherealness to her landscapes.

Provenance

Collection of Marietta Fairlamb and Charles Carver.

A gift from the above.

Collection of Frances Karness (their goddaughter), and her husband Mr. William A. Wolf.

The Wolf Museum of Music and Art, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.