Lemuel Maynard Wiles

Scene in Mohawk Valley, Utica, NY by Lemuel Maynard Wiles (American, 1826-1905)

c. 1860

Painted by Hudson River School artist Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908) , "Scene in the White Mountains" is oil on panel, measures 5.5 x 9.75 inches, and is signed and dated 1864 a...

Painted by Hudson River School artist Ida H. Stebbins (b. 1851), "View of South Pond, New York," 1879 is oil on canvas, measures 23 x 33 1/2 inches, and is signed and dated 1879 at the lower left. The work is framed in an elegant Barbizon style frame and ready to hang. Ida H. Stebbins was born in January 1851 in Chelsea, Massachusetts to Mary and Isaac Stebbins, a teacher. Though scant records remain of Stebbins’ artistic training or career, various personal details of her life have been gleaned from contemporary newspapers and federal documents. By the time View of South Pond, New York was painted in 1879, she was living in Boston. Like many artists of her generation, Stebbins likely traveled throughout the Northeast region, gaining inspiration for her paintings from the landscape of New England and New York. Stebbins was likely visiting upstate New York when she painted this sweeping view of South Pond and the surrounding mountains near Long Lake in the Adirondacks just south of Deerland. Here, Stebbins captures the stunning vermillion, burnt orange and brown tones of the autumn landscape with the style and precise rendering often seen in paintings produced by the Hudson River School. Shortly after the completion of View of South Pond, New York, Stebbins married Frank H. Slack, a clerk, in her hometown of Chelsea on December 14, 1881 at the age of thirty. The couple moved to Hotel Comfort in Boston, where their son, Roland Stewart Slack was born on May 22, 1883. It seems likely that her husband died in the mid-1880s since on December 3, 1889, records indicate that Ida and Roland changed their last name back to her maiden name of Stebbins. Roland Stewart Stebbins (1883-1974) inherited his mother’s interest in art, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Columbia University in New York, and the Art Students League of New York. He also studied at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière and the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Today, he is remembered for his marine and genre paintings and for his legacy as a respected professor of art education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On January 1, 1890, Ida married her second husband, Timothy Jarvis, in Somerville, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Ida Hazel Jarvis, was born soon after in 1893. However, the child suffered paralysis from a brain tumor...

Signed lower right in arrowhead: R A Blakelock; on verso: A Spring Garden

John Ferguson Weir West Point, 1873 Signed and dated lower left Oil on panel 12 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches Provenance: Sotheby's Arcade, American Paintings, December 19, 2003, Lot 1091 Spanierman Gallery, New York Private Collection, New York (acquired directly from the above) Exhibited: Roslyn, Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, William Cullen Bryant, The Weirs and American Impressionism, April 24, 1983-July 31, 1983. A painter, sculptor, writer, and teacher, John Weir was a highly talented man whose painting was overshadowed by his father, Robert Weir, the long-time West Point Academy drawing teacher, and his brother, J Alden Weir, well-known impressionist painter. His distinguished reputation was primarily based on his accomplishments as a teacher and administrator. For many years, from 1869 to 1913, John Weir was the Director of the Yale University School of Fine Arts. He was also a commissioner of the art exhibition at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Weir was born at West Point, New York, and by age 20, had a studio in New York City in the Tenth Street Studio Building, the first building in America dedicated to art studios, and there he associated with many leading painters of the day. He earned attention early in his career for paintings of industrial scenes...