LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  AMERICAN ART  / 

25

Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection THOMAS WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE (1820-1910) A ...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:175,000.00 - 225,000.00 USD
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection THOMAS WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE (1820-1910) A ...
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
THOMAS WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE
(1820-1910)
A Catskill Brook
signed "W. Whittredge" (lower left)
oil on canvas
30 3/8 x 44 1/2 in. (77.2 x 113 cm)
painted circa 1875 <p>Estimate: $175,000-225,000 <p> Provenance
John H. Victor, Wilmette, Illinois, 1910 Mrs. Orrin W. Clifton, 1957 Private Collection, 1957 Ira Spanierman, New York Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland, 1987 <p> Literature
Anthony F. Janson, Worthington Whittredge, Cambridge, New York, Portchester, Melbourne and Sydney, 1989, pp.149-151 Elizabeth Storm Nagy, Europa e America Dipinti e acquerelli dell'Otttocento e del Novecento dalla Collezione Thyssen-Bornemisza, Milan, 1993, p. 70, no. 49 (illustrated) <p> The Catskills were perhaps Whittredge's favorite place to paint, and in the years between 1872 and 1876 he returned to them time and again for inspiration. At some point in the middle of this period, he began to shift away from the more traditional Hudson River School preference for vertical views of woodland interiors, and toward horizontal compositions that had many precedents in Europe, but had seldom been seen in America. Anthony F. Janson writes of Whittredge's originality: <p> It is surprising that this elegantly simple view had not been used in America, since it seems such an obvious solution to the problem of how to represent a forest stream; yet the type never seems to have caught on. ...The virtues of this kind of composition are readily apparent ...in the stability and spaciousness of the scene, which breathes a timeless serenity. The effect is so convincing that one can almost hear the murmur of the brook in the cool shade of the woods.1 <p>This conviction of reality is conveyed as much by the painter's touch as by spatial arrangement. "Whittredge's total mastery of the brush creates a refined surface that conveys the subtlest nuances of light and texture," adds Janson, noting that a "muted palette and delicate impasto" are hallmarks of the artist's two most important forest scenes of the 1870s, Trout Brook in the Catskills, 1875 (Corcoran Gallery of Art), and A Catskill Brook, which Janson also notes are almost identical in composition, quality, and feeling. <p>In his autobiography, Whittredge contrasted his preference for "the sunny side of nature" with the more melancholy proclivities of his close friend and fellow painter, Jervis McEntee, with whom Whittredge had spent many Catskill summers. In paintings such as A Catskill Brook, this optimism approaches reverence, as the critic Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., noted in the Outlook in July, 1904: <p> It is obvious that [Whittredge questions] the subject only so far as he might expect an answer, and never [ventures] to paint Whittredge between the lines. Yet Whittredge is there all the same, in a certain freshness, and if one may use the term, amenity - as if the scene stood on good terms with an invisible painter outside of the frame. <p> We are grateful to Dr. Bruce Chambers for cataloguing this lot. <p> Note 1 Anthony Janson , Worthington Whittredge, Cambridge, New York, Portchester, Melbourne and Sydney, 1989, pp. 150-151.
Sign In to Bookmark Lot