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Lot 708
Description:
William Pearson (American, mid-19th c.), "Landscape with Cattle Beside Water, Meadow", 1882, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left, inscribed "Widener" in white chalk en verso of frame, 20 in. x 30 in., in a good period carved, gessoed, and giltwood frame.
- Notes: Note: William Pearson was evidently from Malden, MA, and was probably a brother of Robert Pearson (who died there in 1891), with whom he shared lodgings in New York City. He exhibited New Hampshire landscapes at the National Academy of Design there in 1857 and 1859, and at the Boston Art Club (with pictures of Malden) in the years ending in 1882 The present picture (of that same year) is a quintessentially perfect American equivalent - a few decades later - of the famous landscapes of the French "Barbizon School," named after the district (with its famous Forest) just southeast of Paris, around Fontainebleau. The ownership inscription "Widener" on the reverse of this original frame offers an indirect confirmation of the Barbizon influence. It is well known that before about 1910 Barbizon landscapes formed the principal décor of the various Widener family houses in and around Philadelphia - for example, in the princely townhouse that Willis G. Hale built for them in the 1880s at Broad and Girard Sts., or most especially in the truly spectacular palace that Horace Trumbauer completed in 1900 for Peter A. B. Widener as Lynnewood Hall in the suburb of Elkins Park (a structure of some 110 rooms, of which 55 were said to be bedrooms). For the quality and extent of its European masterworks, the Widener Collection became the true core of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, after it was given in its entirety to the Nation in 1942 The various catalogues of the collection list few American pictures - apart from obligatory ones by Inness, Whistler, and Cassatt - so this painting of Pearson's may not have hung at "the American Versailles," but at another residence of this pre-eminent family of collectors and philanthropists. References: G.C. Groce & D.H. Wallace, New-York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America, New Haven, Yale, 1957, pp. 494-495; E. Quodbach, "The Last of the American Versailles: the Widener Collection at Lynnewood Hall," Simiolus 29, no. 1
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June 26, 2011 11:00 AM CDT
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