Note
While a student and throughout the course of his career (often at the request of noted patron Albert Barnes), William Glackens visited Paris to find inspiration in the art of the French Impressionists. The first-hand exposure to the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir had a profound effect on Glackens' approach to color, and the artist soon adopted a vivid palette with contrasting harmonies. Girl in an Oriental Costume, along with River Bank (Lot 33) are exemplary in demonstrating Glackens' use of joyful jewel-like colors and sensual, spontaneous, brushstrokes. Although the works are not dated and the locale of River Bank (Lot 33) is unknown, each work's style is very close to that of the paintings the artist completed in France after the mid 1910s, a time when his palette considerably brightened and he abandoned urban scenes to focus on portraiture and landscape painting. Regarding Glackens' new color palette in those years, Arthur Hoeber noted, "If Mr. Glackens thus sees his nature, he must enjoy life far more than the ordinarily equipped human, for there is a riot of tone to his vision."
The demure portrait of a woman dressed as an Odalisque is particularly representative of Glackens' profound reverence towards French artists. Conceived as a late homage to Ingres' famous exotic portraits, the canvas is less reminiscent of Renoir’s palette, and instead shares the rawness of a late Bonnard, or an early Matisse. Through an explosion of textures and a myriad of bold colors, the artist proves that he quickly moved beyond his early Ashcan realism to fully adopt a bright, Americanized version of Impressionism.

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Lot 32

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