Provenance:

The Artist.

Estate of the Artist.

Private Collection, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by 1975.

By descent to the present owner, New York.

Exhibited:

Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, "Exhibition of Paintings by Edward W. Redfield and Edmund C. Tarbell," April 25 – May 21, 1918.

Lincoln, The Nebraska Art Association (University of Nebraska Art Gallery), "Edward Redfield," March 1919.

Philadelphia, Newman Galleries, "Edward Redfield: A Retrospective," October 23 – November 30, 1968.

Harrisburg, The William Penn Memorial Museum, "A Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of the Great American Impressionist Edward Willis Redfield of Pennsylvania," March 31 – May 13, 1973.

Doylestown, Michener Art Museum, "Edward Redfield: Just Values and Fine Seeing," May 1 – December 10, 2004, no. 39.

Literature:

"Collection of Paintings Still Owned by Edward Redfield," Edward Redfield Personal Papers, December 1, 1959.

"Inventory of 157 Oil on Canvas Paintings of Edward W. Redfield's Oeuvre," October 19, 1965.

John M. W. Fletcher, Edward Willis Redfield, An American Impressionist 1869-1965: The Redfield Letters, vol. I, Lahaska, 2002, p. 205, no. 156 (and 211), illustrated.

Constance Kimmerle, Edward W. Redfield: Just Values and Fine Seeing, exhibition catalogue, Michener Art Museum, 2004, pg. 85, illustrated.

Lot Note:

Around 1918, Edward Redfield resided in Pittsburgh and turned his attention to the squalid conditions of urban tenements, a sharp departure from the vivid depictions of the Bucks County countryside that had been the focus of his impressionist landscapes. In Overlooking Soho, Redfield portrays an area that runs along the northern shore of the Monongahela River, known nowadays as The Bluff.

The dull, uniform palette conveys the monotonous tedium of labor and the unforgiving living conditions of the tenement row. The air is thick with oppressive, opaque fumes, the blue sky barely peeking through just below the upper edge of the canvas. The gaze, as it notices the light blue shade—a distant promise of fresh air—is inexorably drawn back to the distant skyline, enveloped by the polluted air.

In the foreground, the uniformity of the palette is subtly disrupted by the elemental appearance of the setting: the log pile, dirt mounts, plank path and clapboard façades evoke texture, anchoring the depiction in the raw reality of tenement life. Here, Redfield offers a candid rendering of a gritty urban environment, while also celebrating the industriousness that takes place in its midst. The painting articulates an uneasy tension between the overwhelming poverty and exhaustion, and the potential for growth and transformation that modernity represents.