Lot 9082
Birge Harrison (American, 1854-1929), Roses in the Snow
Lot Details & Additional Photographs
Stretcher size 22 x 32 in.; Frame dimensions 30 x 40 in.
From the Estate of the late Mr. and Mrs. Stevens and Ruth Nicholson of Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, North Carolina
Birge Harrison was an American landscape painter, teacher, and writer and a leading practitioner of Tonalism. Born in Philadelphia, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before traveling to Paris at the encouragement of John Singer Sargent. Harrison spent approximately six years in Paris, studying with Carolus-Duran and at the École des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel. He also painted in the artists' colonies of Brittany and Grez-sur-Loing, experiences that encouraged his growing interest in plein-air landscape painting. Harrison exhibited at the Paris Salon, and his painting November was purchased by the French government in 1882, an exceptional distinction for an American artist.
Harrison eventually settled in Woodstock, New York, where he became an influential teacher and the first director of the Art Students League's landscape school. Drawing upon the atmospheric traditions he encountered in France, particularly the Barbizon School, he became celebrated for poetic winter landscapes and twilight scenes rendered in subtle, harmonious tones. His influential book Landscape Painting, published in 1909, further established his reputation as an important teacher and advocate of American landscape painting.
Drying crackle to paint surface; no evidence of retouch or restoration visible under UV light; some loss to frame.
