Constructing American Impressionism: A Singular Collection
In the first two decades of the twentieth century Impressionist practice in America was one of optimism and buoyancy, often showing sitters at leisure in peaceful settings. To create a distinctly American strand of Impressionism, emphasis was placed on the locale, reinforcing an emotional attachment to recognizable regional landscapes, comfortable spaces, and familiar interiors.
Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935) The Bather (The Bather I), 1904 | Estimate: $150,000 - 250,000
Edward Henry Potthast's A Happy Group and Frederick Childe Hassam's The Bather both evoke bright, blissful visions of leisure and display a fast, dashing manner, revealing an unquestionable command of impressionist techniques. From 1910 onwards, New York beach scenes became Potthast's preferred subject matter. In A Happy Group, a rich, bright palette and fluid brushstrokes capture sunlight and movement. Rather than offering social commentary, the painting exudes pure bliss and escapist pleasure. The palette in Hassam's The Bather is equally vivid, but the brushstroke is choppier, creating a wiry visual pattern that contrasts with the quiet subject of the painting: a nude woman basking on a sunlit coastline, Hassam's reimagining of the graceful nude, a common classical trope, in the brisk and bright vocabulary of Impressionism suggests that his intention is less documentary than allegorical, transposing an idealized notion of beauty onto a quaint and familiar New England landscape.
The Music Lesson (1921) by Thomas Wilmer Dewing is also replete with a sense of peace and quiet, though conveyed through diffused, subdued tones, rather than bold hues. The setting is an undefined and bare room, save for the piano. The woman sits alone far in the background, detached, seemingly unapproachable. Dewing's manner, combining precise draftsmanship with fuzzy contours, gives the painting a gauzy look and a disorienting intimation that meaning is elusive. This interpretive deadlock precludes defining the woman in conventional terms. She is clad in a neoclassical dress, reminiscent of archetypal allegories of beauty, but that narrative becomes obsolete as soon as it is formed. The modernity emanating from Dewing's method-the fraying contours, evanescent light, the off-center arrangement of the composition- instantly disrupts the outmoded vernacular of ideal beauty and of the female body as its focus.
Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851-1938)The Music Lesson, 1921 | Estimate: $200,000 - 300,000
Women have widely been portrayed in fixed traditional gender roles. Yet, this group of portraits, featuring women engaged in leisurely or intellectual activities, quietly and poetically challenges the usual relationship between the viewer and the female sitter. We are prompted to visually connect with her, perfectly still in her place, only to be confounded by her elusiveness; engrossed in a different mental space, she escapes any attempt at defining herself fully and permanently. Dewing's portrait makes that escape explicit through her frank, direct gaze, daring the viewer to enter the uncluttered room she occupies, without any promise that any narrative will unfold and meaning will be elicited.
Freeman's | Hindman is delighted to feature these compelling works in our upcoming December 8 auction of American Art, alongside canvases by noted Impressionists Richard Miller, John White Alexander, and Irving Wiles. This exceptional group brings forth the vibrancy of American painterly practice at the turn of the twentieth century and showcases the myriad ways in which impressionists masterfully captured blissful moments of leisure.
Lot 36 | Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935) The Bather (The Bather I), 1904 | Estimate: $150,000 - 250,000
Lot 31 | Edward Henry Potthast (American, 1857-1927) A Happy Group (On the Sea Shore) | Estimate: $50,000 - 80,000
Lot 21 | Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851-1938)The Music Lesson, 1921 | Estimate: $200,000 - 300,000