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Lot Essay
Summer, very likely painted in Cragsmoor, New York, is an outstanding example of Charles Curran's most inspired light-filled Impressionist landscapes. Curran, a prolific artist who exhibited works at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1887 until 1935, and at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1883 through 1943, spent his summers in Cragsmoor, New York, where he found the majority of subject matter for his work.
Cragsmoor was a small art colony in the "Hudson River Valley outside of Ellenville, which had developed earlier. The genre specialist Edward Lamson Henry had built a house in Cragsmoor about 1884, after visiting in 1879. Frederick Dellenbaugh arrived two years later, and Eliza Greatorex in 1884. Many more came early in this century, at the time that Impressionism was proliferating. One of the painters involved with Impressionism was Charles Courtney Curran. Invited to Cragsmoor by Dellenbaugh in 1903, Curran was immediately charmed by it, and he completed a house there in 1910. Earlier he had done crisply rendered figures of elegant women in panoramic landscape and more softly rendered fantasy figures of fairylike women among roses, a rare example of American Symbolism. About the time Curran went to Cragsmoor, he turned to the theme that would involve him for the rest of his career: beautiful 'modern' young women in bright sunlight, often high on a hill or mountaintop, silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky. They are not unlike Frank Benson's contemporaneous canvases in spirit and aesthetic. Color is rich and Curran, like Benson, achieved a sense of vitality and immediacy; but his figures are far more sharply drawn and clearly outlined, and his surface sometimes almost enamellike in contrast to Benson's more broken and varied ones. The clear drawing, slightly stylized forms, and limitless space inject an element of fantasy, a heritage perhaps of his earlier Symbolism." (W.H. Gerdts, American Impressionism, New York, 1984, p. 230)
Like many American artists, Curran went to Europe for the majority of his artistic training. "Originally from Hartford, Kentucky, [Curran] grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, studying in Cincinnati and New York before going to Paris in the late 1880s for studies under Benjamin Constant, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Henri-Lucien Doucet. Upon his return to the United States in 1891 he lived in New York City and spent summer months at his home and studio in Cragsmoor. One historian said Curran, a prolific painter who was extremely popular among his colleagues, 'is perhaps best known for those works which combine sweeping vistas of the Cragsmoor area with the almost whimsical delicacy of the female form.'" (S. Shipp, American Art Colonies, 1850-1930, Westport, Connecticut, 1996, p. 27)
Cragsmoor was a small art colony in the "Hudson River Valley outside of Ellenville, which had developed earlier. The genre specialist Edward Lamson Henry had built a house in Cragsmoor about 1884, after visiting in 1879. Frederick Dellenbaugh arrived two years later, and Eliza Greatorex in 1884. Many more came early in this century, at the time that Impressionism was proliferating. One of the painters involved with Impressionism was Charles Courtney Curran. Invited to Cragsmoor by Dellenbaugh in 1903, Curran was immediately charmed by it, and he completed a house there in 1910. Earlier he had done crisply rendered figures of elegant women in panoramic landscape and more softly rendered fantasy figures of fairylike women among roses, a rare example of American Symbolism. About the time Curran went to Cragsmoor, he turned to the theme that would involve him for the rest of his career: beautiful 'modern' young women in bright sunlight, often high on a hill or mountaintop, silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky. They are not unlike Frank Benson's contemporaneous canvases in spirit and aesthetic. Color is rich and Curran, like Benson, achieved a sense of vitality and immediacy; but his figures are far more sharply drawn and clearly outlined, and his surface sometimes almost enamellike in contrast to Benson's more broken and varied ones. The clear drawing, slightly stylized forms, and limitless space inject an element of fantasy, a heritage perhaps of his earlier Symbolism." (W.H. Gerdts, American Impressionism, New York, 1984, p. 230)
Like many American artists, Curran went to Europe for the majority of his artistic training. "Originally from Hartford, Kentucky, [Curran] grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, studying in Cincinnati and New York before going to Paris in the late 1880s for studies under Benjamin Constant, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Henri-Lucien Doucet. Upon his return to the United States in 1891 he lived in New York City and spent summer months at his home and studio in Cragsmoor. One historian said Curran, a prolific painter who was extremely popular among his colleagues, 'is perhaps best known for those works which combine sweeping vistas of the Cragsmoor area with the almost whimsical delicacy of the female form.'" (S. Shipp, American Art Colonies, 1850-1930, Westport, Connecticut, 1996, p. 27)