NILES SPENCER (1893-1952)

Details

NILES SPENCER (1893-1952)

Trees and Farmhouse, Southern France

signed Niles Spencer, l.l. -- oil on board
17 1/8 x 21 1/8 in. (43.5 x 53.7 cm.)

Provenance

Catherine Brett Spencer, the artist's wife

Literature

Richard Freeman, Niles Spencer, Lexington, 1965, p. 13; 29, no. 8

Exhibited

Lexington, Kentucky, University of Kentucky Art Gallery, Niles Spencer Oct.-Nov. 1965 (this exhibition later travelled to Utica, New York, Munson-Williams-Proctor, Nov.-Dec. 1965; Portland,
Portland Museum of American Art, Feb.-March, 1966; Allentown, Allentown Art Museum, March-April, 1966; Manchester, Currier Gallery, April-May, 1966, Rhode Island School of Design, May-June, 1966);
New York, Linda Hyman Fine Arts, American Modernist Landscapes: The Spirit of Cezanne, Nov.-Dec., 1989, pp. 40-41, no. 17, illus.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art at Equitable Center, Niles Spencer, April-June 1990, p. 13, no. 4

Lot Essay

Painted circa 1921-22.

Richard Freeman writes: "In 1921 the Spencers managed a trip to Europe...[where] they fell in love with the French Riviera. They may have visited the nearby Cezanne country around Aix-en-Provence, for there exists from Spencer's brush a momento in the form of an undated very Cezannesque landscape, Trees and Farmhouse...it was Cezanne who moved Spencer. There is a formal and classical monumentality, especially in Spencer's late 'cityscapes', that Cezanne would have approved."