DENNIS MILLER BUNKER (1861-1890)
DENNIS MILLER BUNKER (1861-1890)
DENNIS MILLER BUNKER (1861-1890)
DENNIS MILLER BUNKER (1861-1890)
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IN PURSUIT OF LIGHT: THE COLLECTION OF CAROL AND TERRY WALL
DENNIS MILLER BUNKER (1861-1890)

Yellow and Pink Roses

Details
DENNIS MILLER BUNKER (1861-1890)
Yellow and Pink Roses
oil on canvas
8 ¾ x 12 ½ in. (22.2 x 31.8 cm.)
Painted circa 1886
Provenance
Graham Williford, Fairfield (by 1974).
Private collection (circa 2000).
Adelson Galleries, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owners.
Exhibited
Shreveport, The R.W. Norton Art Gallery, Seventh Annual Christmas Exhibition, December 1974.
New Britain Museum of American Art, Dennis Miller Bunker Rediscovered, April-May 1978, no. 16.
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art and Denver Art Museum, Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist, January-December 1995, pp. 173 and 182, no. 24 (illustrated in color, p. 142).
New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., American Beauty: The Rose in American Art, 1800-1920, May-July 1997, p. 109 (illustrated in color, p. 59, pl. 32).
Montclair Art Museum, A Shared Love: Treasures of American Painting (1878-1919) from the Carol and Terry Wall Collection, May 2024-February 2025.

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Lot Essay

During his brief and celebrated career, Bunker produced some of the most accomplished landscapes, still-lifes, and figural paintings of his generation. He counted among his friends many of the period’s greatest artists, including John Singer Sargent, Edmund Tarbell and Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Bunker additionally studied with William Merritt Chase in New York and Jean-Leon Gérôme in Paris.
Yellow and Pink Roses is a stunning example of Bunker's mastery of still life, executed with careful color and energetic brushwork that reflects his studies in France. As seen in the present example, "Bunker's images seem ephemeral, the physicality of the blossoms contradicted by the indecipherable spaces they inhabit" (E.E. Hirshler, Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist, ex. cat., Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1995, p. 48). Against the cool grey background, Bunker's sumptuous roses stand out, blossoming toward the viewer.

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