Clarence Durham

Jenny Lake, Estes Park – 1950s Mid-Century Rocky Mountain Landscape Oil Painting

circa 1950

This vintage 1940s original oil painting beautifully captures the essence of Boulder Canyon, showcasing the stunning Colorado landscape with majestic mountains and vibrant Aspen trees in their autumnal glory. The piece highlights the rich fall colors of gold, orange, and red as the Aspen leaves turn, reflecting the serene beauty of Colorado's mountainous terrain. Presented in a custom gold frame, the outer dimensions are 25 ¼ x 21 ¼ x 1 ½ inches, while the image size itself measures 22 ¼ x 18 ¼ inches. About the Artist: Irene Fowler (1884-1969) was an influential figure in the development of Denver's art scene. Born in Illinois, she moved to Denver where she became a public school teacher and a founding member of the Denver Artist’s Guild (now the Colorado Artist’s Guild). Throughout her career, Fowler painted stunning landscapes in oil and watercolor, most often working en plein air to capture the natural beauty of Colorado's diverse scenery. Known for her landscapes of Colorado, Fowler expertly depicted the unique features of the region: towering mountains, quaking Aspen trees, and rustic mining towns. Her work is marked by an exceptional understanding of the thin mountain air and luminous sunshine that make Colorado’s landscape so striking. Fowler was a prominent figure in the Denver art community, exhibiting her works at major venues such as the Schlier Gallery, Chappell House, the University Club...

This stunning autumn mountain landscape by renowned artist Raphael Lillywhite captures the breathtaking beauty of Colorado’s rugged terrain. Painted in the traditional plein air styl...

Expansive landscape painting of the Teton Range in Wyoming reflecting in a nearby lake by Alma McGovern (American, 20th century). Signed and dated "Alma '61...

Charles Warren Eaton (1857 – 1937) The Shadow of Mount Rockwell, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1921 Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches Signed lower right: CHAS WARREN EATON. Provenance: The artist The Macbeth Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby's New York, American Art, April 14, 1989 ConocoPhillips, Houston Simpson Galleries, Houston, Fine Art & Antiques, May 18, 2019, Lot 447 Exhibited: New York, The Macbeth Gallery, Paintings of Glacier National Park by Charles Warren Eaton, December 13, 1921 - January 2, 1922, no. 2. Literature: "Two Exhibitions at Macbeth's," American Art News, New York, Vol. XX, No. 10, December 17, 1921. A contemporary critic wrote that the paintings of Charles Warren Eaton appeal to “the dreamers who find in them the undiscovered scenes in which their fancy long has dwelt.” Eaton’s contemplative landscapes exude a spiritual quality that moves the observer into a similar frame of mind. He loved to depict the ethereal light of dawn and dusk in late autumn or winter, usually without any reference to human or animal figures or buildings. These Tonalist paintings, with their subdued palette and relatively intimate scale, marked a definite break with the fading popularity of the panoramic and romantic views of the Hudson River School painters. Charles Warren Eaton was born in Albany, New York to a family of limited means. He began painting while working in a dry-goods store. At age 22, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York City and then studied figure painting at the Art Students League. By 1886, he was successful enough to quit his day job and make a living as a landscape painter. That year, he traveled to Europe with fellow Tonalist painters Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster. In France, Eaton visited popular artist’s spots such as Paris, Fontainebleau and Grez-sur-Loing, and fell in love with the loose brushwork and moody style of French Barbizon painting. Returning to the United States, Eaton fell under the spell of George Inness, the foremost exponent of Barbizon style in the United States. In 1888, Eaton settled near Inness in Bloomfield, New Jersey, where Eaton lived until his death in 1937. In this period, he painted shadowy and ambiguous landscapes inspired by rural scenery in the northeastern United States. His signature theme was a cropped view of the branches, trunks, and foliage of a pine grove silhouetted against a delicately illuminated sunset or moonlit sky. He painted this vision so often between 1900 and 1910 that he picked up the sobriquet ‘‘The Pine Tree Painter.” After 1910, Eaton responded to the popularity of Impressionism by using brighter colors and painting sunlit daytime scenes. In 1921, he was hired to paint Glacier Lake, in Glacier National Park by the Great Northern Railroad Company as part of their ‘See America First’ campaign. He produced more than 20 paintings, among the artist's last works, that now poignantly remind viewers of the vast disappearing glaciers. Eaton tended to approach this mountain scenery from an oblique vantage point; he liked to capture small episodes, showing mountaintops nearly obscured by dramatically attenuated screens of fir trees. Eaton, like many Tonalist artists of his generation such as Henry Ward Ranger, John Francis Murphy, and Charles Melville Dewey...