Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 10

Will Foote
"View of Arizona Desert near Wickenberg" Will Foote, Impressionist Western Scene

circa 1927

About the Item

Will Foote View of Arizona Desert near Wickenberg, circa 1927 Signed lower center; titled and dated on the reverse Oil on artist's board 12 x 16 inches Foote was born on June 29, 1874 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and died on January 27, 1965, in Sarasota, Florida. He was in Old Lyme, 1901-65; and in Cos Cob, 1903. Will Howe Foote was one of the earliest artists at Old Lyme and one who adopted the town as home. He first went there the summer of 1901 with his uncle, William H. Howe, a painter of cattle, who had been told about the beauties of the countryside by Henry Ward Ranger. Foote had himself heard of Old Lyme when he had met Clark Voorhees in France. He and his uncle were both from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Foote's father was an executive in the furniture industry that made the city famous. Encouraged to be an artist by his father, he began his professional training at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1894. He became friends there with a fellow Michigan student, Frederick Frieseke, who would study with him again at the Art Students League in New York, where Foote worked in 1895-96 under H. Siddons Mowbray and Kenyon Cox. In 1897 he and Frieseke went to the Academic Julian in Paris, where Foote studied under Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. He was at Julian's until 1900, except for an Italian trip, summers at Laren, Holland, or Etaples, France, and a short period at Whistler's school in Paris. He exhibited twice at the Old Salon, and when he returned to the United States in 1900, he had a one-man exhibition in his hometown. Will Howe Foote's paintings were well received on his return from abroad. He exhibited frequently at the National Academy of Design and became an associate member in 1910. His awards included a bronze medal at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 and a silver medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Once he visited Old Lyme, Foote returned every summer. In 1902 he was hired as assistant to Frank DuMond at the Lyme Summer School of Art, which was sponsored by the Art Students League of New York. Sometime in 1903 he also taught a session in Cos Cob. After 1906, when the League moved its Lyme classes to Woodstock, New York, Foote continued in Old Lyme as a private instructor. In 1907 he was married to Helen Kirtland Freeman, whom he had met a year or two earlier when she had come to the Lyme art colony as a student of Henry Rankin Poore. Fellow artist William Chadwick was best man at the wedding. The Footes began building a house on Sill Lane in Old Lyme and upon its completion in 1909 spent every spring, summer and fall there, where Foote devoted full time to painting. The Gregory Smiths, old friends from Grand Rapids, arrived in Old Lyme in 1910 and became neighbors. Foote's early works in Connecticut, such as A Summer's Night reflect the artist's interest in soft, atmospheric scenes dominated by a single, overriding tone. The arrival of Childe Hassam and Walter Griffin influenced Foote as it did many other Old Lyme artists, and his palette consequently lightened, becoming at times as high key as in Summer. Throughout his experimentation with light and color, however, Foote's interest in form, mass, and simple geometric arrangements continued. Considering that he lived there so long, Foote painted the Old Lyme countryside relatively little. He was not fond of working with green, a color omnipresent in Connecticut in summer. Furthermore, he disliked New England winters so much that he avoided nearly all of them, favoring the Caribbean, Mexico, or the American Southwest. Though his work had been included in a Macbeth Gallery exhibition in 1914, Foote, who had money of his own, never had nor wanted a dealer. When sales of his pictures fell off badly during the 1920s, Foote declined invitations to exhibit in museums and galleries, feeling it not worth the trouble and expense of crating and shipping. After 1933 he exhibited only at the annual exhibitions of the Lyme Art Association. He continued to experiment with subject matter and technique, but he destroyed all but what he judged to be his best work. Foote was the last survivor of the original Old Lyme group. He had been active in the town's civic affairs as well as in its art colony. He was a charter member of the local volunteer fire department. He died in 1965 at ninety years of age and is buried next to his wife in the Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme. After his death, memorial exhibitions of his work were held both in Grand Rapids and in Old Lyme. In 1978 S.K.T. Galleries of New York organized a Foote retrospective that travelled to the Lyme Historical Society the following year.
  • Creator:
    Will Foote (1874 - 1965, American)
  • Creation Year:
    circa 1927
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 18 in (45.72 cm)Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    Unique WorkPrice: $6,500
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1841215068622

More From This Seller

View All
"The Green Parasol, " Henry Hannig, American Impressionist, Woman in Beach Scene
By Henry Hannig
Located in New York, NY
Henry Charles Hannig (1883 - 1948) The Green Parasol Oil on canvas mounted on board 6 x 7 3/4 inches Provenance: R.H. Love Galleries, Chicago, Illinois Private Collection, Lake Orion, Michigan Hannig, born in Hirschberg, Germany on 27 February 1883, came to America with his parents at the age of seven. He attended school in the southwest suburbs before the family settled in Chicago. Young Henry enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts where Lawton Parker became his mentor. He made ends meet by working in industrial design and illustration. By 1908 he was a pupil in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where students followed the traditional European drawing curriculum, beginning with the copying of master engravings and drawing after plaster casts, then concentrating on the nude figure. Students worked toward the goal of winning various academic prizes. One of Hannig's fellow students was Louis Ritman...
Category

1910s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

"Bass Rocks" Josephine Reichmann, Impressionist Surf, Luminous Waves, Seascape
Located in New York, NY
Josephine Reichmann Bass Rocks Signed lower right Oil on canvasboard 14 x 16 inches Reichmann was born in 1864 in Louisville, Kentucky. After studying at the School of the Art Inst...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

"Open Pasture, Winter" Francis Henry Richardson, American Impressionist Painting
Located in New York, NY
Francis Henry Richardson Open Pasture, Winter Signed lower right Oil on board 10 3/8 x 13 inches Richardson, born in Boston, entered the formal art world in his late twenties. His ...
Category

Late 19th Century American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Board, Oil

"Brooklyn, New York" Frederick James Boston, Impressionist Brooklyn Landscape
By Frederick James Boston
Located in New York, NY
Frederick James Boston Brooklyn, New York Inscribed verso Oil on board 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches Though understudied today, Frederick James Boston was a well-known and respected teacher...
Category

Late 19th Century American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

"Factories on The River" Charles Vezin, Impressionist Industrialization
By Charles Vezin
Located in New York, NY
Charles Vezin Factories on The River Signed lower right Oil on canvas board 12 x 13 15/16 inches After spending half his years as a partner in a highly profitable wholesale dry-goo...
Category

Early 20th Century American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

"Gloucester Boats" Frederick Mulhaupt, Impressionist Gloucester Scene
Located in New York, NY
Frederick John Mulhaupt Gloucester Boats Signed lower left Oil on board 12 x 16 inches Born in Rock Port, Missouri, in 1871, Mulhaupt studied...
Category

Early 20th Century American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

You May Also Like

In the Garden, 10x8" oil on board
By Lu Haskew
Located in Loveland, CO
In the Garden by Lu Haskew Oil Painting of woman with an umbrella in a backyard garden 10x8" image size 14x12" framed Shipping price includes the custom packing necessary for safe t...
Category

Early 2000s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Garden Gate
By John Fulton Folinsbee
Located in Milford, NH
A fine impressionist landscape with a figure sitting under a garden gate or trellis with flowers in bloom by American artist John Fulton Folinsbee (1892-1972). Folinsbee was born in Buffalo...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Winter Fishermen, American Impressionist Snowy Landscape by the River
By Albert Van Nesse Greene
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Winter Fishermen" is a snow covered landscape of a group of fishermen and their boats by the river by American Impressionist painter Albert Van Nesse Greene...
Category

Early 20th Century American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Carmel Mission, 1870 - California School Landscape Oil Painting
Located in Soquel, CA
Carmel Mission, 1870 - Landscape Oil Painting One of California's Mission settlements lies on the Central Coast in Carmel, depicted in this landscape oil painting. The Spanish architecture...
Category

20th Century American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Rota, Spanish Landscape -- Pobre Casa Cadiz
By John Sackas
Located in Soquel, CA
Wonderful Spanish landscape of a humble farm in Rota, Cadiz, Spain with horses, a cow with two herons, one of which is on cow's back by San Francisco artist John Sackas (American, 1910-2004), circa 1950s. Signed lower Left "Sackas" and verso Rota Farm House Cadiz" "John Sackas" . Verso has location, attribution and full artist's biography. Presented in gilt-toned carved wood frame. Image size: 14"H x 18"W. Born in New Jersey on May 22, 1910. John Sackas studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (1934), Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and California School of Fine Arts, Jerry...
Category

1950s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas, Illustration Board

Wells Fargo Express, Gold Country -- Columbia, California
By Cecil F. Chamberlin
Located in Soquel, CA
Charming oil painting of the Wells Fargo Express Office building in the gold country town of Columbia State Historic Park in Columbia, California by Cecil ...
Category

1950s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Illustration Board

Recently Viewed

View All