Alexander Bower

"Reflections, " Alexander Bower, Boats on the Water, American Impressionism View

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...

Frederic Milton Grant (1886 - 1959) Low Tide, 1916 Oil on canvas 16 1/4 x 18 1/8 inches Signed and dated lower right Housed in a Stanford White Newcomb-Macklin frame. Exhibitied: Ar...

Harry Leith-Ross (1886 - 1973) Fisherman of Yankee Cove Oil on canvasboard 8 1/8 x 10 1/2 inches Signed lower left; also with artist, title, and number '39' on label verso Provenance: Private Collection, Pennsylvania Landscape painter Harry Leith-Ross was born in Mauritius in 1886, a British possession in the Indian Ocean. He came to America as a seventeen year old. Before beginning, some ten years later in 1914, his studies at the Art Students League Summer School in Woodstock, New York at the relatively late age of twenty-eight, Leith-Ross had worked as a commercial artist. He studied with John F. Carlson and Birge Harrison at the League Summer School, and later with C. Y. Turner at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He then went to Paris, studying with Jean Paul Laurens at the Academie Julien and in England with Stanhope Forbes. Long associated with the Bucks County artists' colony in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Leith-Ross may have first gone there in 1912. It is definitely known that he visited the area in 1916 at the invitation of a student he had met when both attended the Art Students League Summer School in Woodstock, John Fulton Folinsbee. Birge Harrison, his former instructor at the League, whom he met again, was also there in New Hope during the winters from 1914 to 1916. The third and last generation of the New Hope colony would be comprised of artists like Leith-Ross, Folinsbee and Kenneth R. Nunamaker. It is somewhat ironic that Leith-Ross, so long affiliated with the New Hope School of American Impressionism...

Helen M. Goodwin (1865 - 1955) Nantucket, Massachusetts Oil on canvas laid on panel 12 x 16 inches Signed and titled lower right Helen M. Goodwin was born in New Castle, Indiana in ...

Oil on artist board, signed Emily Hoffmeier lower left Most likely a scene of Nantucket harbor and presented in what could be the original frame with a slightly highlighted silver finish. Presents well overall measuring 16.5" x 20.5" including the frame. From 1929 to her death in 1952, Emily Hoffmeier (1888-1952) spent summers on Nantucket, painting in the waterfront studios—first Harborview No. 3 and later moving to the Red Anchor Studio on Washington Street. She exhibited in the Easy Street Gallery, the Candle House Studio, and later at the Kenneth Taylor Galleries. After the death of Maud Stumm in 1935, Hoffmeier took over the direction of the annual Sidewalk Art Show, which she ran for the next eighteen years “with untiring cheerfulness and unflagging interest.” She was one of the founding members of the Artists Association of Nantucket and served on its first executive committee. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachuetts, Hoffmeier taught art classes at the college for several years. From 1917 to 1951 she was a teacher at West Chester High School in Pennslyvania, where she headed the mathematics department. In addition to enrolling in the plein air classes of Frank Swift Chase...

Camillo Adriani was born in Massachusetts in the late 19th century. He studied art in Boston. Adriani was especially well known for his vibrant portrayal of New England snow scenes...

The early (pre-war) Gloucester Harbor scene by Emile A. Gruppe is richly atmospheric and captures the working waterfront in the golden glow of early evening. Gruppe’s mastery of coas...

A fine impressionist oil marine harbor scene painting by Australian American artist Hayley Lever (1876-1958). Lever was born in Adelaide, Australia and studied first at the Adelaide...