CHARLES COURTNEY CURRAN (1861-1942)
CHARLES COURTNEY CURRAN (1861-1942)
CHARLES COURTNEY CURRAN (1861-1942)
CHARLES COURTNEY CURRAN (1861-1942)
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CHARLES COURTNEY CURRAN (1861-1942)

Chrysanthemums

Details
CHARLES COURTNEY CURRAN (1861-1942)
Chrysanthemums
signed and dated 'Chas. C. Curran. 1890.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
9 ½ x 12 ¼ in. (24.1 x 31.1 cm.)
Painted in 1890.
Provenance
Private collection, Vermont.
Christie's, New York, 1 June 1984, lot 99A, sold by the above.
Private collection, New York, acquired from the above.
The Manoogian Collection, Taylor, Michigan, by 1993.
Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2008.
Literature
C. Bradstreet, Scented Visions: Smell in Art, 1850-1914, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2022, p. 170.
Exhibited
(Possibly) Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Exposition de Peintures et Sculptures Par un Groupe D'Artistes Américains, June 4-July 13, 1891, p. 17, no. 33 (as Corner in the Greenhouse).
New York, National Academy of Design, Annual Exhibition, 1893, no. 120.
New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Art Gallery; Detroit, Michigan, Detroit Institute of Arts; Atlanta, Georgia, The High Museum of Art, A Private View: American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, April 3, 1993-March 6, 1994, pp. 27-31, illustrated.
Sapporo, Japan, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art; Shiga, Japan, The Museum of Modern Art; Yokote, Japan, The Akita Museum of Modern Art; Japan, Tokuyama City Museum of Art History; Yokohama, Japan, Sogo Museum of Art, From the Hudson River School to Impressionism: American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, July 5, 1997-February 1, 1998, p. 201, no. 52.
Memphis, Tennessee, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Celebrate America: 19th Century Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, February 7-April 18, 1999, pp. 40-41, illustrated.
Memphis, Tennessee, Dixon Gallery and Gardens; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Frick Art and Historical Center; Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia Museum of Art, Charles Courtney Curran: Seeking the Ideal, July 27, 2014-May 17, 2015, pp. 46, 116, no. 13, illustrated.

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Lot Essay

Charles Courtney Curran was born in 1861 in Hartford, Kentucky, before settling in Ohio with his family. While he primarily worked in New York, Curran also studied in Paris in the 1880s, and his introduction to French Impressionism informed his style for the rest of his career. After returning to America, Curran spent forty summers at the artist's colony in Cragsmoor, New York, inspired by the beautiful landscape around him.

The present work was painted in 1890, during Curran's stay in Paris while studying at the Académie Julien. Depicting two delicately rendered figures in a greenhouse, "This work is one of the first times that Curran included flowers as an important part of a composition. Eventually they would become integral to many of his pictures." (J.W. Faquin, Charles Courtney Curran: Seeking the Ideal, exhibition catalogue, Memphis, Tennessee, 2014, p. 46) The woman at left was likely modeled on the artist's wife Grace, who appears in a number of works from this period.

Further, the present work reflects the fascination with Japanese art that permeated 19th-Century Europe following the end of isolationism. "In Chrysanthemums, Curran's understanding of the formal principles of Japanese prints is evident in the bold diagonal thrust of the composition...the Japanese print was crucial to a translation of three-dimensional reality into two-dimensional pattern." (R.J. Frank, in A Private View: American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, exhibition catalogue, New Haven, Connecticut, 1993)

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