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Lot Essay
One year after Guy Rose's death, Arthur Millier commented on the artist's ability as a landscape painter, "The strongest subjects found in him a poetic interpreter who felt life in subtle tones and sensitive lines...Guy Rose has yet to meet his equal among landscape painters of this section for delicacy of perception, refinement of color and melodic charm." (Arthur Millier, The Los Angeles Times, November 14, 1926)
Born and raised in Pasadena, California, Guy Rose returned to his hometown in 1912 after spending several years abroad, and remained there until his death in 1925. Though he was heavily influenced by French Impressionism, particularly by the work of Claude Monet, Rose had a unique sensibility that was quite uncharacteristic of the European manner of painting. Rather than scientifically mastering the effects of light and color and translating them directly onto the canvas, Rose added a sentience to his landscapes that was unseen in Monet's. "Rose is a direct, artistic descendent of Monet, but he is a man of today, and he is therefore more personal in his point of view. In him, Monet's passion for paint has been metamorphosed by time spirit into a poetic feeling for nature, a more fastidious faculty of selection." (Antony Anderson, The Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1917)
After his return to Southern California, Rose embraced the local landscape and its majestic qualities. In San Gabriel Wash, Rose displays a serene composition of a flat, dry washbed cut only by a small stream of water. The foreground is heavily painted and its rich texture exhibits Rose's confident brushwork. The background, marked by the looming San Gabriel mountains and the sky above, is defined by much lighter, quicker brushstrokes. These variations, from the heavy impasto of the desert floor to the lighter, more airy delineations of the sky, are perhaps aesthetic reflections of Rose's philosophy. The heavier, more grounded earth gradually leading toward the distant intangible sky uncovers the spirituality in Rose's landscapes, a testament to his personal, transcendent impressions of nature.
Largely considered the father of California Impressionism, Rose's style was a more accessible version of the scientific French Impressionism. "It combined the traditional and recognizable values of accurate drawing and careful observation with what was for them the still wholly vanguard Impressionist aesthetic of light. Rose's painting offered clarity and order, two primary virtues subscribed to by his audience, at the same time as it described the sun-drenched and colorful California landscape in terms of heightened sensuality. His synthesis of technical prowess in paint with obvious lyric sensibilities represented to his viewers a just and reasonable balance between nature and poetry." (Will South, Guy Rose, American Impressionist, The Oakland Museum and The Irvine Museum, California, 1995, pg. 61)
Born and raised in Pasadena, California, Guy Rose returned to his hometown in 1912 after spending several years abroad, and remained there until his death in 1925. Though he was heavily influenced by French Impressionism, particularly by the work of Claude Monet, Rose had a unique sensibility that was quite uncharacteristic of the European manner of painting. Rather than scientifically mastering the effects of light and color and translating them directly onto the canvas, Rose added a sentience to his landscapes that was unseen in Monet's. "Rose is a direct, artistic descendent of Monet, but he is a man of today, and he is therefore more personal in his point of view. In him, Monet's passion for paint has been metamorphosed by time spirit into a poetic feeling for nature, a more fastidious faculty of selection." (Antony Anderson, The Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1917)
After his return to Southern California, Rose embraced the local landscape and its majestic qualities. In San Gabriel Wash, Rose displays a serene composition of a flat, dry washbed cut only by a small stream of water. The foreground is heavily painted and its rich texture exhibits Rose's confident brushwork. The background, marked by the looming San Gabriel mountains and the sky above, is defined by much lighter, quicker brushstrokes. These variations, from the heavy impasto of the desert floor to the lighter, more airy delineations of the sky, are perhaps aesthetic reflections of Rose's philosophy. The heavier, more grounded earth gradually leading toward the distant intangible sky uncovers the spirituality in Rose's landscapes, a testament to his personal, transcendent impressions of nature.
Largely considered the father of California Impressionism, Rose's style was a more accessible version of the scientific French Impressionism. "It combined the traditional and recognizable values of accurate drawing and careful observation with what was for them the still wholly vanguard Impressionist aesthetic of light. Rose's painting offered clarity and order, two primary virtues subscribed to by his audience, at the same time as it described the sun-drenched and colorful California landscape in terms of heightened sensuality. His synthesis of technical prowess in paint with obvious lyric sensibilities represented to his viewers a just and reasonable balance between nature and poetry." (Will South, Guy Rose, American Impressionist, The Oakland Museum and The Irvine Museum, California, 1995, pg. 61)