Polo Game

Details

WALT KUHN (1877-1949)
Polo Game
oil on canvas
25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm.)
Painted circa 1914.

Provenance

The artist.
Estate of the above.
Laura P. Taylor, Irvington, New York, 1967.
Private collection, New York, by descent from the above.
Adelson Galleries, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Literature

Art Journal, vol. XXII, no. 3, Spring 1963, p. 185, illustrated.
J. Gruen, New York Herald Tribune, 1966.
P.R. Adams, Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work, Columbus, Ohio, 1978, pp. 20, 64-66, 81, 240, no. 21, pl. 13, illustrated.
J. Rzucidlo, "'Life's Pleasures' Exhibit is Now Open at the DIA," AmericaJR, April 7, 2008, n.p.
F.T. Reuter, Animal & Sporting Artists in America, Middleburg, Virginia, 2008, p. 393, illustrated.

Exhibited

Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Walt Kuhn: A Memorial Exhibition, 1960, n.p., no. 3, illustrated.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Decade of the Armory Show: New Directions in American Art, 1910-1920, February 27-April 14, 1963, p. 73, no. 47.
Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona, Art Gallery, Painter of a Vision: A Retrospective of Oils, Watercolors and Drawings by Walt Kuhn, February 6-March 31, 1966, p. 11, no. 20, illustrated.
New York, Maynard Walker Gallery, Early Works by Walt Kuhn, April-May 1966, p. 8, no. 2, illustrated.
Fort Worth, Texas, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art; Omaha, Nebraska, Joslyn Art Museum; Wichita, Kansas, Wichita Art Museum; Colorado Springs, Colorado, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Walt Kuhn: A Classic Revival, August 6, 1978-April 15, 1979, n.p., no. 1.
Nashville, Tennessee, Frist Center for the Visual Arts; New York, New-York Historical Society; Detroit, Michigan, Detroit Institute of Art, Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925, August 2007-May 2008.

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Lot Essay

Likely painted in 1914, Polo Game is Kuhn's "first fully postimpressionist arrival...There is very little impressionism or cubism in Polo Game and quite a bit of Raoul Dufy. There were two oils by Dufy in the Armory Show, both dating from his best fauve period of 1909, and Kuhn may have seen many more in Paris...The horses and riders are boldly, clearly drawn, the audience a Prendergast tapestry of color with a few sharply contoured parasols as accents." (P.R. Adams, Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work, Columbus, Ohio, 1978, pp. 64, 65)

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