Description: An oil on canvas painting of a group of women and several men dancing in the forest. A body of water in the background. Remnants of signature on lower right.


History: Louis Eilshemius was born to wealthy and socially prominent immigrant parents near Newark, New Jersey. His earliest paintings, reflecting the influence of Corot and Inness, placed him well within the context of contemporary American art. He had his work accepted by the National Academy of Design in 1887 and 1888. He seemed destined for glittering success. This official recognition, apparently so promising, had to sustain him for the remainder of his active career. His subsequent entries were rejected, and he continued to work for three decades without further encouragement. The involuntary isolation ultimately destroyed him. What queered his career was a strain of fantasy; he introduced into his atmospheric pictures incidents of a naive sort - lubricious, melodramatic, somewhat wooden. People laughed at them and eventually, he quit art. He stopped painting in 1921. A cranky, messy, bearded bachelor, he lived with a brother and an old housekeeper in the family's Manhattan brownstone. The last twenty years of his life were devoted almost exclusively to barren eccentricities designed to promote himself. In endless letters to the newspapers he ranted of his unjust fate. As the result of being struck by an automobile in 1932, he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his days. He became fodder for the journalists, providing better copy than they could have fabricated on their own. Penniless, bitter and famous, he died of pneumonia on December 29, 1941.

Provenance: Lorber Estate, Palm Beach, FL


Dimensions: Weight (Pounds & Ounces) = 6.5 | Height(in) = 26 | Width(in) = 34.5 | Depth(in) = 1.5

Size of Artwork(in): 21 x 30" sight.


Artist Name: Louis Eilshemius


Medium: Canvas, paint


Circa: Circa 1900

Stretcher bar marks. In paint, patch on verso.