Robert van Vorst Sewell (American, 1860-1924)

L'Hiver

Details

Robert van Vorst Sewell (American, 1860-1924)
L'Hiver
signed and dated 'ROBERT V V SEWELL./MDCCCLxxxVI.' lower left
oil on canvas
39½ x 31¾in. (100.4 x 80.6cm.)

Literature

L. M. Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, p. 369
E. Broun and A. Fern, American art at the 1893 World's Fair: Revisiting the White City, 1993, p. 316 (as Winter, unlocated)

Exhibited

Paris, Société des Artistes Français, Salon of 1887, no. 2188
Chicago, The World's Columbian Exhibition, 1893, no. 626 (as Winter)
Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Institute of Art

Lot Essay

Sewell was born in New York in 1860 and moved to Paris to study with Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. His paintings attracted the attention of the architect Stanford White who began to collect his pictures, and he was commissioned to paint many decorative murals, inlcuding one at the St. Regis Hotel in New York depicting Psyche. The year L'Hiver was exhibited at the Salon, Sewell was joined by his compatriots Frederic Edwin Church, John Singer Sargent and Julius Stewart. In addition to exhibiting at the Salon, Sewell exhibited in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago and Buffalo and New York.