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Another owner ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM (1857-1903) A Garland of Roses (June) signed "Blum" (l...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:80,000.00 - 120,000.00 USD
Another owner ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM (1857-1903) A Garland of Roses (June) signed Blum (l...
Another owner
ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM
(1857-1903)
A Garland of Roses (June)
signed "Blum" (lower left)
pastel and traces of oil on canvas
28 x 13 1/2 in. (71.12 x 80.01 cm)
painted circa 1897
Estimate: $80,000-120,000 <p> Provenance
Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York Richard and Gloria Manney, New York Private Collection, Beverly Hills <p> Exhibited
New York, National Academy of Design, Sixteenth Annual Autumn Exhibition, November 15-December 18, 1897, no. 192 New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, American Beauty: The Rose in American Art, 1800-1920, pp. 24 and 71 <p> Literature
"Exhibition of the National Academy of Design," The Art Amateur, 38, December 1897: 4 Bruce Weber, American Beauty: The Rose in American Art, 1800-1920, pp. 24 and 71 <p> A Garland of Roses shares many similarities to work that Blum created during the pinnacle of his career (between 1893 and 1898) in preparation for the Mendelssohn Hall murals - The Mood to Music and The Vintage Festival (Brooklyn Academy of Art). These major pieces, commissioned by Alfred Corning Clark, were intended to convey the festive spirit of music through its spiritual, poetic grace and the more physical, sensual side of dance. As each mural consists of numerous figures, the artist produced sketches, more developed pictures, and clay models as a way of experimenting with pose, drapery, expression, and color. <p>The female figure in A Garland of Roses, dressed in a classical garment, represents a participant in an ancient Bacchanalian feast. She is similar to the kind of sensual women that Blum postured in The Vintage Festival, the more sensual and Arcadian of the two murals. According to Bruce Weber, <p> A Garland of Roses (June) is the only easel painting Blum is believed to have completed during the last decade of his life...As in the murals [the artist] appeals to the imaginative faculties and senses of his viewer and creates a beautiful vision of classical arcadia. [The painting] also has much in common compositionally and stylistically with Blum's Japanese painting Cherry Blossoms (c. 1892) which features a young Japanese woman in an orange kimono standing before a blossoming cherry tree. <p>Executed in pastel, this work shows Blum's mastery of the medium, as well as his renowned achievement of seductive color harmony.
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