ROBERT REID (1862-1929)

Details
ROBERT REID (1862-1929)

The Brook

signed Robert Reid, l.l.--oil on canvas
26 5/8 x 30¾in. (67.6 x 78.2cm.)
Provenance
Mrs. William Henry Bliss, Washington, D.C.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, Washington, D.C.
Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
New York, Sotheby Parke-Bernet (Sale: December 12, 1975, lot 82)
Mr. and Mrs. John W. Graves, Wichita, Kansas
New York, Sotheby Parke-Bernet (Sale: April 21, 1978, lot 75)
Literature

Exhibited
New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, Inc., Ten American Painters, 1899
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Fourth Annual Exhibition, 1899, no. 192
Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Fogg Art Museum, 1942
Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Directions in American Painting 1875-1925, June-Aug. 1982, pp. 66-67, illus. (this exhibition travelled to various locations, 1982-1987)
Youngstown, Ohio, Youngstown State University, The John J. McDonough Museum of Art, Inaugural Exhibition, Oct. 1991-May 1992

Lot Essay

RELATED LITERATURE:
U. Hiesinger, Impressionism in America, The Ten American Painters, New York, 1991, pp. 242-3

This is most probably the painting The Brook that Reid included in the Ten's second annual group exhibition at Durand-Ruel, New York, in 1899, and may have also been included in Reid's exhibition of old and recent works at his own studio in the same year. In a New York Daily Tribune review of his one-man exhibition at Durand-Ruel the preceeding year, an anonymous critic (possibly Royal Cortissoz) commended Reid's ability to "render the last, most evanescent aspect of a subject, but to take nothing from its reality..." (Hiesinger, p. 242) Reid's training and continued career as a muralist, and his later focus on portrait painting, make non-figural landscapes like The Brook a relatively rare occurence in his oeuvre.