American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Provenance:

The Artist.

Durand-Ruel, Paris, France.

Paul Schulze, Chicago, Illinois, by 1920.

The Walter H. Schulze Memorial Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, a gift from the above, 1941.

Sotheby's, New York, Sale of June 9, 2016, Lot 87.

Acquired directly from the above sale.

Private Collection, New York.

Exhibited:

New York, Montross Gallery, "Exhibition of Pictures by J. Alden Weir," January 2 – 15, 1907.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, "Exhibition of Paintings by Ten American Painters," April 11 – May 3, 1908, no. 86. (as June).

(Possibly) New York, Montross Gallery, "Annual Exhibition of the Ten," 1909.

Cincinnati, Cincinnati Art Museum, "Special Exhibition of Paintings by J. Alden Weir," March 16 – April 15, 1912, no. 4 (as June).

(Possibly) St. Louis, City Art Museum of St. Louis, "Ninth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists," May 1914.

San Francisco, The Panama–Pacific International Exposition, February 20 – December 4, 1915, no. 2427 (Gallery 49, Wall D, as June).

(Possibly) New York, Whitney-Richards Galleries, "Works by J. Alden Weir," until March 18, 1916.

Literature:

Julien Alden Weir: An Appreciation of His Life and Works, New York, 1922, p. 134 (as June)

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago, 1961, p. 481.

Doreen Bulger Burke, J. Alden Weir: An American Impressionist, Cranbury, 1983, p. 231, illus.

Lot Note:

Despite his early reservations about Impressionism, Julian Alden Weir, a member of the Cos Cob Colony and one of the “Ten,” became one of its most prominent practitioners in America. His embrace of the aesthetic and technical tenets of Impressionism yielded a body of work characterized by a typically gentle, tonally uniform palette and broken brushwork. In Day in June, likely painted at his Branchville farm, Weir masterfully captured a scene of leisure using exactly those devices.

The diaphanous color scheme composed of soft greens and blues drapes the painting in ease, warmth, and comfort. It conjures the simplicity of a beautiful summer day, when the natural surroundings are teeming with abundant vegetation, cocooning the carefree figures in their midst. Weir’s use of patterning, through organically blending but distinct brushstrokes, gracefully infuses an airy, wispy sense of motion in this unhurried and relaxed tableau.