Attributed Alfred Maurer (1868 - 1932) American. Oil on Canvas on Board. Measure 30"in H x 20 1/2"in W. Alfred Maurer was born in 1868 in New York City, the son of Louis Maurer, a commercial artist for Currier and Ives. He worked in the family lithographic business as a young man and attended the National Academy of Design in 1884. In 1897 he left for Paris where he remained until 1914, with the exception of a brief return trip to America in 1901. He studied in Paris at the Academie Julian for a brief period. He developed a rich, brushy, tonal style, influenced by Frans Hals and Velasquez, as well as Chase, Sargent and Whistler. Between 1905 and 1907, Maurer abandoned his tonal style, and a promising career as a traditionalist, and developed instead a brilliant Fauvist approach to color and form. His conversion may have been prompted by friendship with Gertrude and Leo Stein. He was using high-keyed colors in place of muted tonalities, strong contracts of color and more simplified, angular schemes of figural representation. Since almost all American artists had left Europe after the outbreak of World War I, the period between 1914 and 1919 was most important for the development of modern art in America. Maurer returned from Europe in 1914 and became friendly with most of the young modernists. Maurer's father died at the age of one hundred, shortly before Maurer himself committed suicide in 1932. Some attributed his suicide to his alienation from popular acceptance and from his stressful relationship with his father.

For condition report please contact our auction house via email info.coralgablesauction@yahoo.com