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Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection CHARLES HAWTHORNE (1872-1930) The Kimono Gi...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:150,000.00 - 250,000.00 USD
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection CHARLES HAWTHORNE (1872-1930) The Kimono Gi...
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
CHARLES HAWTHORNE
(1872-1930)
The Kimono Girl
signed "C.W. Hawthorne" (lower right)
oil on canvas
30 x 24 in. (76.2 x 61 cm)
painted circa 1897 <p>Estimate: $150,000-250,000 <p> Provenance
Cowie Galleries, Los Angeles William Keighley, Beverly Hills The Art Center, La Jolla, California, 1949 until 1979 Private Collection, Dallas Spanierman Gallery, New York, 1989 Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland, 1989 <p> Exhibited
Kobe, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art; Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum; Tokyo, The Bunkamura Museum of Art; Hiroshima, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Two Hundred Years of American Paintings from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, January 5-August 25, 1991, no. 25 <p> Shape, form, and pattern mattered to Charles Hawthorne. Later in his career, his portrait subjects would "read" both as individuals and as spare amalgamations of form, expertly composed in space. In The Kimono Girl, an early work of circa 1897, the mood is more decorative but the artist's concerns are the same: Hawthorne's kimono-clad model is a charming presence, but she is also an integral part of a balanced composition of form and pattern. <p>Hawthorne was born in Maine in 1872. Coming to New York at the age of eighteen, he supported himself as a dock hand and stained-glass maker while taking evening classes at the Art Students League, eventually studying with Frank Vincent Du Mond, George de Forest Brush, and H. Siddons Mowbray. He also attended William Merritt Chase's summer classes at Shinnecock, and in the fall of 1896, helped Chase found and manage the Chase School of Art in Manhattan. Hawthorne's work was much influenced by the paintings of Frans Hals, encountered on a trip to Holland in 1898, and by the work of Renaissance masters Giorgione and Titian. After a 1906 trip to Italy, Hawthorne developed the haunting, ennobling style that characterizes his later work. Hawthorne passed on his vision to his own students at The Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which he founded in 1899, and where he taught most summers until his death in 1930. <p>This painting dates from around 1897 when Hawthorne was most closely associated with William Merritt Chase. Like many artists painting at the turn of the 20th century, Chase often included the emblems of Japonisme - robes, fans, and screens - in his portraits and interiors. Like Chase, Hawthorne is able with a few bravura brushstrokes, to suggest the elaborate pattern on the Japanese robe his model wears, enlivened with dashes of a brilliant orangey-red. But in The Kimono Girl Hawthorne has gone a step further than his accomplished mentor, incorporating not just the props - but also the principles - of Japanese art. By flattening the painting's perspective and presenting his model at close range - as in a Japanese print - Hawthorne allows her upswept hair and billowing robes to become part of a memorable symphony of pattern and shape. Her pose suits the design, rather than the conventions of standard portraiture, and she turns away from the viewer - a charming presence in a decorative whole.
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