“COUNTRY ROAD”
Oil on Panel
Provenance: The estate of the artist
Bearing estate two stamps verso
Panel bearing the stamp "Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet 18 Rue Vavia & 2.Rue Bres-Paris"*
Museums: Whistler House Museum of Art; Everson Museum Of Art; Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts;
Philadelphia Sketch Club; Art Club Philadelphia;
Luxembourg Museum, Paris
Books
17: including Light, Air, and Color: American Impressionist
Paintings from Pennsylvania
Academy of
Fine Art, Danly; Art What Thou Eat, Images
of Food in American Art, Gustafson;
The History and Ideals of American Art,
Neuhaus
Image size : 7.5” High x 9.5” Wide
Note:
We are very fortunate to
have sereral works by Philadelphia and New York painter
Elisha Kent Kane Wetherill.
Wetherill studied with Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Art
in the late 1890s and from 1906-09, with J.P.
Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris, 1902,
and with James Abbot
McNeill Whistler, also in Paris.
He
specialized in views of New York, including figural work as well as
landscapes and seascapes.
He was a member of the National Academy
of Design, Salmagundi Club, Allied Artists of America,
Brooklyn Society
of Etchers, and the Philadelphia Sketch Club.
In 1915, Wetherill
received a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.
and in 1926 won a silver medal at the Sesqui-Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia.
He also exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago,
and at the National Academy of Design in 1925.
"Country Road" is depicted in vibrant colors
form a somewhat abstract post-impressionist pattern,
making the subject
matter secondary to the paint and its almost sponge-like application -
a
characteristic of much of his work.
Wetherill achieves a jewel-like
shimmer to the surface through the vibration of warm and cool
hues of a
similar hue and value - most in the tertiary range (oranges, violets, and
greens).
His composition again - though appearing spontaneous - is quite
carefully executed.
The curving lines of the road and tree-tops are
precisely balanced by the simply suggested
outlines of the buildings - both
in the triangles of the roofs, and the horizontal and vertical lines.
These are elements that set very fine art apart from the random good
painting.
*Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet was a well-known art supply dealer in Montparnasse.
The firm was responsible for art conservation and supplied canvases and pigment to many of the modern
masters.
It has been said that Monsieur Lefebvre-Foinet was responsible for the spread of modern art as he was
influential enough to accomplish the export of
hundreds of canvases from American galleries to
post-war Europe. He
also had a fine collection of art.
SOLD
#5876
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