Cyrus Cuneo

"Sleeping in the Hay, " Cyrus Cuneo, California Impressionism, Children Genre

circa 1900

Carle John Blenner (1862 - 1952) Pont Neuf, Seine, Paris, France, 1887 Oil on canvas 15 x 22 inches Signed and dated lower right; titled lower left Carle J. Blenner was born in Rich...

Eugène Laurent Vail (1857 - 1934) Soir de Novembre, Dordrecht Oil on canvas 19 1/4 x 25 3/4 inches Signed lower left; titled in two places on the stretcher with various other inscriptions, stamped "MADAME G:VAIL A" and inscribed "177" in ink and "#43" in pencil on a partial label from Garde-Meuble Maple affixed to the stretcher Eugene Vail (Saint-Servan, France September 29, 1857 - Paris, December 28, 1934), the son of a French mother and an American father, Lawrence Eugene Vail, studied at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (where Alfred Stieglitz was born in 1864) and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1877. Then he became a student of William Merritt Chase and J. Carroll Beckwith at the Art Students League before returning to France. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1882 where he was instructed by Alexandre Cabanel, Raphaël Collin, and Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929), known as an extreme naturalist. When Bastien-Lepage died in 1884, Dagnan-Bouveret became the leader of the Naturalist School. He definitely made an indelible impression on Vail. According to Louise Cann, Vail soon became an independent painter working at Pont-Aven and Concarneau. It is difficult to determine when he separated from his teachers since he is listed as a student whenever he exhibited at the Paris Salon — that is, until 1899 when he dropped the mention of élève. A picture of a peasant girl, Seulette was his Salon debut painting in 1883, the same year that he sent two scenes of Brittany to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' exhibition, which documents his stay in that region. The next year he exhibited in the Salon: Fishing Port, Concarneau, which went to the Luxembourg Museum (it is now in the Musée Municipal of Brest). It has the Naturalist brown and gray palette and tonalist atmosphere but already shows that Vail had direct experience with scenes of life in coastal villages: "So convincing was his familiarity with the French coast that the critic Thiébault-Sisson claimed him as a Frenchman and declared that no American marine painter could touch his skill." (Maureen C. O'Brien, in Blaugrund, 1989, p. 218). In 1885, Vail exhibited Inner Port at Dieppe and in the following year On the Thames (Private collection), which later won him the Grand Diploma of Honor from an international jury in Berlin in 1891. Widow, the title of Vail's entry in the Salon of 1887 (unlocated), is a striking image of a woman standing on a beach, looking out to the expanse of the ocean where her husband obviously met his end. The innocent child who looks at us may have the same fate in store for him. Then in 1888, Vail completed his masterpiece, Ready, About! a "wall-size" 94 x 125½ inch canvas. The painting won a first-class gold medal in the Salon of 1888, then at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, Vail won another gold medal. The first precedent that comes to mind is Théodore Géricault's colossal Raft of the Medusa of 1819 (Louvre), the celebrated romantic image of castaways about to be rescued after being lost at sea. But while Géricault presents a massive, sculpturesque group of figures struggling on a raft just beyond our designated viewing space, Vail pulls the viewer into the picture, or more exactly, extends the diagonally rocking boat into the spectator's area, vividly anticipating the effects of cinematography. There is no more effective way to engage the spectator's attention and sympathies, and the illusionism is especially effective in this life-size picture. Vail's vigorous brushwork — a uniform use of rectangular strokes — adds to the motion-filled, dynamic actuality of this image, and the overall green-gray tonalities evoke the constantly menacing, cold and wet travails in the life of the fishermen in the Atlantic's rough waters. Theodore Child (1889, p. 518) wrote about this painting: "very beautiful in color, and amongst the very strongest and best pictures of this kind in the Exhibition." Dordrecht (unlocated) was Vail's painting exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1892, and in the following year he showed Fisherman — The North Sea at the Paris Salon, the same year in which he re-exhibited Dordrecht and On the Thames at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Vail won the coveted Légion d'Honneur in 1894. Some of his paintings found their way to European museums, for example, Soir de novembre (Odessa Museum) and Soir de Bretagne (Museo d'Arte Moderna, Venice). The latter was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. Also there was Voix de la mer (Voices of the Sea), which we identify as the painting that appears in an interior view of the American section, just to the right of a doorway (fig. 20 in Fischer, 1999), a simple marine painting. Some time after 1900, Vail turned to both impressionism and post-impressionism but no one seems to have charted this course. His Autumn near Beauvais, illustrated in International Studio (1902, p. 211), The Flags, St. Mark's Venice (1903; National Gallery of Art), and Grand Canal, Venice, ca. 1904 (Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design) demonstrate an impressionist technique with broken color. Mandel (1977, p. 202) wrote on the latter: "applied in short strokes juxtaposing brilliant hues of orange, blue, white, black and red, with a strong interplay between the warm pink tones of the walls and the green shadows of the black boats which are silhouetted against them." Cann (1937) believed that in Venice, Vail "found his true self." The Flags forecasts the Armistice Day pictures by Hassam and others, painted fifteen years later. Vail became involved in the Society of American Artists in Paris and the Société Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, whose membership included Frank Brangwyn, Charles Cottet (1863-1924), the famous Naturalist sculptor Constantin Meunier (1831-1905), Frits Thaulow...

Harold C. Dunbar (1882 - 1953) Meadow Landscape in Summer, 1929 Oil on canvas 17 1/2 x 21 inches Signed and dated lower left Harold C. Dunbar — painter, teacher, writer, and illustrator — was born in Brockton, MA on December 8, 1882. He resided in Chatham, MA and died in 1953. His work includes portraits, landscapes, street scenes, still lifes, harbors and coastal scenes. Dunbar studied with Ernest Lee Major (1864-1950) and Joseph De Camp...

Gustav (Gustave) Wolff (1863 - 1935) View of New York Harbor from the Staten Island Ferry Oil on canvas 16 x 12 inches Signed lower right In the Autumn of 1913, the German Associati...

Theodore M. Wendel (1859 - 1932) Autumn Landscape Oil on canvas laid down on panel 10 1/2 x 16 inches Signed lower right Theodore Wendel is one of the most respected American impressionists and major museums and collectors are eager to purchase exquisitely rendered works like "View from the Artist's Farmhouse, Ipswich, MA" that display Wendel's finest period of impressionism. He is considered the "most French" of American painters along with Theodore Robinson and Childe Hassam. Who Was Who in American Art states, "He was one of the most successful Impressionist landscape painters of Boston - and America…He was one of the few Americans whose works Monet chose to praise….[he was] one of the most important American Impressionists." American Art Analog states, "Theodore Wendel was one of the first American artists to embrace the form and technique of French impressionism….In the summer of 1886 he went to Giverny, the home of Monet, and joined an American colony of young artists, among them Louis Ritter...

George Henry Leonard, Jr. (1869 - 1928) La Marre de Soire Oil on canvas 15 x 21 3/4 inches Signed lower right A landscape painter--primarily using a late impressionist loose stroke as his main mode of expression--Leonard drew not only upon French influences, but also the American school of impressionism characterized by Frank Boggs...

Signed lower right: Irving R. Wiles

Signed lower right: Irving R. Wiles

A child of the American South, Elliott Daingerfield was born in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where his father, C...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: John R. Grabach (1886 - 1981) John Grabach was a highly regarded New Jersey artist, teacher, and author of the classic text...

Signed lower right. Complemented by a hand carved and gilt frame. Exhibited at the National Academy of Design, 1928

Jim’s of Lambertville Fine Art Gallery is proud to present this piece by Martha Walter (1875 - 1976). Born in Philadelphia in 1875, Martha Walter attended Girls’ High School followe...