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American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists
|
- Sale 6384
Live
| Philadelphia
Dec 7 | 1:00 PM EST
Live
| Philadelphia
Sale 6384
| Philadelphia
| Philadelphia
Estimate$50,000 – $80,000
Provenance:
Sotheby's, New York, Sale of September 26, 1990, Lot 46.
Newman Galleries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Acquired directly from the above.
Lot Note:
Few American painters active in the second half of the 19th century so effectively captured the sea and surf in oil–whether luminous, crashing, raging, stormy or calm, from Grand Manan to Nantucket to Cornwall–as William Trost Richards. While unidentified, the subject of the present painting may well be Rhode Island, possibly Newport, where Richards first summered and built his home, or Conanicut Island overlooking Narragansett Bay, the site of his cliff top home "Gray Cliff." While Richards more commonly worked on a smaller scale than he has in Rolling Surf (including in the case of his watercolors), the quality and detail of his larger format seascapes do not disappoint. Here the canvas is roughly divided in half between a cumulus cloud-filled sky and choppy green sea, with a wave about to crash at left and a lone seagull swooping above rockery at right. Painted towards the end of Richards's life, the painting underscores the artist's adherence to the "truth to nature" philosophy espoused by John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites in the which vistas are depicted in a detailed, unvarnished manner rather than the romanticized approach favored by the Hudson River School painters, who sought to evoke the sublime in their depictions the American landscape.
Framed: 35 1/2 x 57 1/2 in.
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Adam Veil
VP, Head of Department, American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists
