OSCAR BLUEMNER
Landscape, Staten Island.
Watercolor, gouache and pencil on wove paper, 1902. 256x360 mm; 10x14 inches. Initialed and dated in ink, lower center recto, and indistinctly titled in pencil, lower right recto.Provenance: Graham Gallery, New York; Athena Fine Arts Corporation, New York; Mark Borghi Fine Art, Inc., New York; private collection, Chicago.Exhibited: Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, 1993.Bluemner (1867-1938), one of America's most accomplished Modern colorists, was largely overlooked for the majority of his career. Now, however, his place alongside Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Marsden Hartley and Max Weber—all fellow exhibitors at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291, in New York—is recognized, and he ranks among the group of the most modern and influential artists in America during the early 20th century.After developing a friendship with Stieglitz around 1911, and after a drawn-out litigation to rightfully claim his recognition and compensation for designing the Bronx, New York courthouse, Bluemner decided to turn completely to painting in 1912 and embarked on a seven month European voyage. Upon his return, after exposure to works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, as well as the Fauves and Cubists, Bluemner's work reflected a dramatic shift toward the bright, streamlined style that would define his work and parallel the avant-garde developments made by other American modern artists during the early 20th century. Like Edward Hopper, Bluemner traveled widely along the east coast, mostly in the countryside surrounding New York, and made numerous watercolor studies of landscapes and buildings, many of which are devoid of human presence.