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Lot Essay
The gardens and landscapes of France were significant for Frederick Carl Frieseke and his artistic production. Outdoors is where his two most frequent subjects, women and sunlight, came together most dramatically. The great majority of Frieseke's most accomplished paintings are of women awash in the bright sunlight of the French art colony of Giverny, where Frieseke spent much of his time once he first visited in the late nineteenth century. For many years, Frieseke produced canvases to considerable critical acclaim and commercial success, establishing his place at the forefront of the American Impressionists among Childe Hassam, Theodore Robinson, and Richard E. Miller.
At the time of the present work, in 1920 to 1921, Frieseke contributed a number of paintings to an exhibition circulated by Frieseke's dealer, friend and supporter William Macbeth. The exhibition traveled to various cities around the United States, and according to one contemporary reviewer, Frieseke's entries were "skillfully executed and beautiful paintings illustrating the present standards of impressionism. All Americans are certain to take pleasure in the glimpses of artist life in Giverny, which one obtains from Mr. Frieseke's pictures. There is a charm about the outdoor summer life in France, and the garden chairs, the open doors and windows make a direct appeal to the lovers of the fresh-air cult. Mr. Frieseke exercises his undeniable talents in a somewhat circumscribed area. His pretty home in Giverny, where the model, a graceful girl, is seen amongst the flowers, or seated a charmingly set tea-table, adding grace to the graceful surroundings, is the base of the present collection, and the story of home life is told with admirable effect, brilliance of color and with perfect draftsmanship." (as quoted in V.M. Mecklenburg, "An Artist in Transition: Frieseke in the 1920s and 1930s," Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, Princeton, New Jersey, 2001, p. 102) This praise can certainly be applied to Woman Seated in a Park with Basket, where a woman sits calmly in the shade, out of Frieseke's vibrantly painted sunshine.
The work exhibits Frieseke's lifelong interest with the effects of light, an interest undoubtedly piqued, at least initially, by the French Impressionists Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir, whose work Frieseke would have known quite well. Frieseke's mastery of the subject is clear. Bright beams of sunlight filter through the thinly populated grove of blossoming trees, whose white and yellow flowers are countless highlights on the work's backdrop of leafy trees. Spots of sunlight dapple the grass around the woman and spot her blouse and skirt, staccato highlights in the shade.
The woman in the work is, as were many of the women Frieseke painted in the last two decades of his life, engrossed in her activity, quietly not acknowledging her viewer. In the 1920s, writes Mecklenburg, while he "remained interested in the light illuminated and defined the human figure...[Frieseke] shifted his focus to subjects engaged in contemplative activities such as reading, sewing, and playing the piano." (Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, p. 99) Frieseke's stylistic move toward women and figures who were withdrawn from their surroundings and overcome with introspection could be a reference to his own circumstances. His complex compositions in the late 1910s and throughout the decade of the 1920s exhibit a more measured and ordered approach to spatial balance, according to Mecklenburg, perhaps a result of his own inward focus. Frieseke himself wrote, underscoring this newfound, contemplative thought process "my present method of painting allows me to produce very few pictures compared with what I turned out previously...These pictures take five to six times as long to paint as previous ones-and I consider them far more complete as works of art." (as quoted in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, p. 99)
In Woman Seated in a Park with Basket, Frieseke's two favorite subjects have come together in an attractively designed and executed canvas that exhibits the ongoing and careful awareness that he had for the ephemeral play of light and shadow and for the continuation of the venerable art historical tradition of female representation.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Frieseke's works being compiled by Nicholas Kramer, the artist's grandson, and sponsored by Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York.
At the time of the present work, in 1920 to 1921, Frieseke contributed a number of paintings to an exhibition circulated by Frieseke's dealer, friend and supporter William Macbeth. The exhibition traveled to various cities around the United States, and according to one contemporary reviewer, Frieseke's entries were "skillfully executed and beautiful paintings illustrating the present standards of impressionism. All Americans are certain to take pleasure in the glimpses of artist life in Giverny, which one obtains from Mr. Frieseke's pictures. There is a charm about the outdoor summer life in France, and the garden chairs, the open doors and windows make a direct appeal to the lovers of the fresh-air cult. Mr. Frieseke exercises his undeniable talents in a somewhat circumscribed area. His pretty home in Giverny, where the model, a graceful girl, is seen amongst the flowers, or seated a charmingly set tea-table, adding grace to the graceful surroundings, is the base of the present collection, and the story of home life is told with admirable effect, brilliance of color and with perfect draftsmanship." (as quoted in V.M. Mecklenburg, "An Artist in Transition: Frieseke in the 1920s and 1930s," Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, Princeton, New Jersey, 2001, p. 102) This praise can certainly be applied to Woman Seated in a Park with Basket, where a woman sits calmly in the shade, out of Frieseke's vibrantly painted sunshine.
The work exhibits Frieseke's lifelong interest with the effects of light, an interest undoubtedly piqued, at least initially, by the French Impressionists Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir, whose work Frieseke would have known quite well. Frieseke's mastery of the subject is clear. Bright beams of sunlight filter through the thinly populated grove of blossoming trees, whose white and yellow flowers are countless highlights on the work's backdrop of leafy trees. Spots of sunlight dapple the grass around the woman and spot her blouse and skirt, staccato highlights in the shade.
The woman in the work is, as were many of the women Frieseke painted in the last two decades of his life, engrossed in her activity, quietly not acknowledging her viewer. In the 1920s, writes Mecklenburg, while he "remained interested in the light illuminated and defined the human figure...[Frieseke] shifted his focus to subjects engaged in contemplative activities such as reading, sewing, and playing the piano." (Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, p. 99) Frieseke's stylistic move toward women and figures who were withdrawn from their surroundings and overcome with introspection could be a reference to his own circumstances. His complex compositions in the late 1910s and throughout the decade of the 1920s exhibit a more measured and ordered approach to spatial balance, according to Mecklenburg, perhaps a result of his own inward focus. Frieseke himself wrote, underscoring this newfound, contemplative thought process "my present method of painting allows me to produce very few pictures compared with what I turned out previously...These pictures take five to six times as long to paint as previous ones-and I consider them far more complete as works of art." (as quoted in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, p. 99)
In Woman Seated in a Park with Basket, Frieseke's two favorite subjects have come together in an attractively designed and executed canvas that exhibits the ongoing and careful awareness that he had for the ephemeral play of light and shadow and for the continuation of the venerable art historical tradition of female representation.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Frieseke's works being compiled by Nicholas Kramer, the artist's grandson, and sponsored by Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York.