American Landscapes of the Late 19th and 20th-Centuries

Provenance

Collection of Duncan Phillips

Macbeth Gallery, New York

Edwin C. Shaw, Akron, Ohio, September 1922

The Estates James A. & Dorothy C. Vaughn, Sea Island, Georgia

Exhibited

New London, Connecticut, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, A Good Summer’s Work: J. Alden Weir, Connecticut Impressionist, May 7-September 11, 2016

Literature

David A. Cleveland with foreword by John Wilmerding, A History of American Tonalism: 1880-1920, Manchester and New York, Hudson Hills Press, 2010, p. 524-525, fig. 8.106, color illustrated

Note

This painting depicts the Windham, Connecticut home of Carlsen’s friend and fellow artist, Julian Alden Weir.

Description

While Emil Carlsen had developed a reputation early in his career as one of late nineteenth-century America’s preeminent still life painters, by the turn of the next century he was renowned for the many landscapes he chose to represent his work at exhibitions throughout the country.

Afternoon Landscape, painted at the Windham, Connecticut home of his close friend J. Alden Weir, reflects Carlsen’s unique approach to landscape painting. As in his still life compositions, in which the considered placement of evocative articles and the close values of their jewel-like surfaces elevate these works into objects of beauty and contemplation, this nestled sprawl of ancient buildings is unified into a total harmony through the artist’s masterful touch and subtle coloration.