Description:

Gaines Ruger Donoho (American/Mississippi, 1857-1916), "Autumnal Landscape", oil on canvas laid on masonite, signed lower left, 30 in. x 36 in., framed. Note: Gaines Ruger Donoho was born in Church Hill, Mississippi in December 1857, the son of a prosperous plantation owner. The onset of the Civil War, coupled with the death of his father, disrupted Donoho’s childhood in Mississippi. His mother’s relatives arranged for their move at the end of the war and eventually they ended up in Washington, D.C. By 1878, Donoho was studying painting in earnest and left for New York to enroll at the newly formed Art Students League where his teachers were William Merritt Chase and Walter Shirlaw. After only a year, Donoho traveled to France to further his painting studies at the Académie Julian in Paris. He studied under noted French artists William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Rodolphe Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. When the “ecoles” of Paris closed for the summer months, the American artists went on painting excursions to the countryside, notably to Fontainebleau forest and its environs, Barbizon and Grez. Drawings made during these trips became the basis for his first major compositions, which were included in important exhibitions. Between 1881 and 1886, Donoho’s paintings were regularly exhibited at the Paris Salon and beginning in 1882, he was sending his work back to America for exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and National Academy of Design. In 1885, his painting Bords de Foret (sold in these rooms Feb. 5, 2000, lot 286, and now in the collection of the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art) won an award at the New Orleans Cotton Centennial Exposition. In 1887, he returned to New York, eventually settling in East Hampton. The painting offered here shows Donoho’s love of nature and the influence of the Barbizon school and Impressionism in his paintings. An old stone wall creates an interesting diagonal composition, surrounded by fallen autumn leaves and brightened by moss on the rocks. Gnarled trees stand in the background like sentinels. Donoho’s work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Mississippi Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art among many others. His oil paintings rarely are seen on the market. Ref.: G. Ruger Donoho (1857-1916): A Retrospective Exhibition. Hirschl & Adler Galleries. New York, March 12-April 2, 1977. Barilleaux, Rene Paul and Victoria J. Beck. G. Ruger Donoho, A Painter’s Path. Jackson: Mississippi Museum of Art, 1995.

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September 24, 2016 10:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US

Neal Auction Company

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