Attributed to Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/New Orleans, 1854-1923), "Louisiana Landscape with Cabin, Pier and Sailboat", oil on canvas, unsigned, 14 in. x 22 in., framed.
Provenance: Descended in the family of noted music critic Adolph Pollatsek (Hungary/New Orleans, 1841-1906) and his granddaughter, ballet dancer Constance Reynolds Green (New Orleans, 1916-2012).
Note: Of the venerable Bayou School painters, Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. undoubtedly has the most distinctive style with his recognizable minute brushwork. Noted for his fine detail in painting moss-laden oak trees and marsh grass, his exquisitely rendered scenes of Louisiana's waterways, shanties and fishermen are distinct from those of Richard Clague and William Henry Buck. The work offered here is a stunning example of Smith's fully developed mature style. The shore line of the lake curves to the left with the most developed part of the landscape in the right foreground. This is the same compositional technique used in "Cypress Grove, Gulf Coast" in the Roger Houston Ogden Collection and "Laundry Day on Lake Pontchartrain," (ex-collection Martha Ann Samuel). Smith almost always features a man engaged in some activity; here a man in a red shirt carries wood along the shore. This same figure appears in lot 299, the large Smith painting from the same estate collection. The sailboat tied to the pier is another hallmark of Smith's work. The atmospheric sky with a gradation of clouds was developed by Smith in his 1873-74 studies in Europe and successfully rendered here in an accomplished mature style.