American & European Art

This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Frieseke's work being compiled by Nicholas Kilmer, the artist's grandson, and sponsored by Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York. We thank him for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

In the artist's notebook, in an entry datable 1905, p. 17 right, in a list that includes two other paintings for the 1905 Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux–Arts, the title of the present painting is listed as Etude de Lumiere. It is then crossed out and replaced by Femme lisant à coté d'une lampe.

Provenance:

Campanile Galleries, Chicago, 1970s

Private Collection

R.H. Love Galleries, Chicago

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibited:

Paris, Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux–Arts, 1905, no. 522, pp. XV, 93, illus. (as Femme lisant à côté d'une lampe)

Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Eighteenth Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists, October 19 - November 26, 1905, no. 126, p. 29 (as Girl Reading-Lamplight)

Chicago, R.H. Love Galleries, The Genteel Tradition in American Painting, February 14 - March 28, 1998 (also traveled to Daytona Beach, Florida, The Museum of Arts and Sciences, January 15 - March 21, 1999)

Lot note:

The model may be Gertrude Faxon, who also featured in Frieseke's Girl with Book (Nasturtiums), by 1904. A native of Owosso, Michigan, Gertrude had modeled for Frieseke during his visit there in 1902. She may have been in the New York-Philadelphia-Atlantic City area during the artist's stay there in 1904, when she was experimenting with a theatrical career. There is also an entry in Frieseke's notebook, datable c. 1903-4, p. 12 left, the Paris address of a Gertrude (last name not recorded) at 3835 Vincennes [?] Avenue. A letter of August 12, 1902, from Frieseke (in Owosso, Michigan) to Sarah O'Bryan that suggests Gertrude Faxon was contemplating traveling to France.