E. Ambrose Webster
Volunteer Firemen, Provincetown
c. 1933

Name: Volunteer Firemen, Provincetown
Brand: E. Ambrose Webster
Price: 6000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Preparatory drawing for Volunteer Firemen, Provincetown Graphite on paper, 1932 Initialed in pencil by the artist lower left: W Provenance: Estate of the artist, 1935 Georgianna Webster (the artist's wife) Karl Rodgers (her nephew), 1942 Allegra H. Rodgers (his wife) Babcock Galleries References And Exhibitions: Babcock Galleries, E. Ambrose Webster, May 2003 Illustrated: Illustrated: Gail R. Scott, E. Ambrose Webster: Chasing the Sun, Manchester, Vermont and New York, 2009 (see photo of illustration of painting and drawing together) Scott, page 184 “Volunteer Firemen, Provincetown, involved many preliminary studies. Two of his students, Charles Darby and Fritz Fuglister, modeled for the male figures, who strain to turn the winch on some type of water pumping equipment. Incongruously, amidst the energy and vigorous efforts of the volunteer firefighters, a female nude-perhaps symbolizing Provincetown’s artistic community and heritage-reposes serenely on a bluff overlooking the scene. This motif-of a female nude posed in a landscape, sometimes among clothed men-is Webster’s modernist version if an older tradition dating back to Giorgioni in the Renaissance and Courbet in the 19th century.” Webster, known as an American Fauve, exhibited at the famous 1913 Armory Show in New York City. He was a founding member of the Provincetown Art Association.

Creator:

E. Ambrose Webster (1869 - 1935, American)

Creation Year:

c. 1933

Dimensions:

Height: 6.5 in (16.51 cm)Width: 10 in (25.4 cm)

Medium:

Graphite

Movement & Style:

Modern

Period:

1930-1939

Condition:

Framed: 19 x 22".

Gallery Location:

Fairlawn, OH

Reference Number:

Seller: FA64771stDibs: LU14010690752

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E. Ambrose Webster

E. Ambrose Webster was among our first and most forceful modern painters, and is one of America’s greatest interpreters of Fauvism. His masterworks are in such public collections as the Corcoran and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. In recent years his work has figured prominently in publications and exhibitions at Babcock Galleries’ E. Ambrose Webster: A Retrospective of Paintings and The Armory Show Years of E. Ambrose Webster, in the High Art Museum’s The Advent of Modernism, 1987 and in William Gerdts’ 1997 landmark work The Color of Modernism: The American Fauves and, more recently in 2007–08, the Greenville County Museum of Art’s retrospective exhibition E. Ambrose Webster: Pioneer Modernist. Webster’s dynamic career spanned 40 years and found him consistently in the middle of the Modernist movement. He traveled and exhibited widely, knew important artists everywhere, was acclaimed by his peers and created some of the finest and most adventurous paintings of his time.

Webster was a consummate American Modernist painter. After initial studies under Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson in Boston, he spent nearly three years in Europe absorbing the latest developments in the Post-Impressionist art world. By 1900 he returned to the United States, and, having developed his own original idiom, became a prominent member of the progressive art community. Over the years he traveled widely in France, Spain, Italy, North Africa, the Azore Islands, Jamaica and Bermuda, seeking the sunlight-heightened color which inspired him. In 1906, while painting in the Caribbean, he exhibited a work which secured the Musgrave Silver Medal from the Institute of Jamaica. By 1913 he was exhibiting in Boston and Cleveland with Charles Hovey Pepper, Carl G. Cutler and Maurice Prendergast. Webster also participated in the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art (The Armory Show) and showed in New York thereafter.

(Biography provided by Driscoll Babcock Galleries)