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"FISHING ON THE LAKE" BY CHARLOTTE BUELL COMAN (AMERICAN, 1833-1924)
Oil on canvas, signed lower left "C B Coman"
Item # 906QUA15Z
A luminous and magnetic scene, there is an interesting use of reflections, shadows and a muted palette to create mood. There is a vivid brushstroke that creates a bleary impressionism throughout the scene, this depicting a lone fisherman resting in the shadows of overhanging trees. A small white stone house with a vibrant red roof is attractively situated at the water's edge while the water loosely reflects the foliage. A distant town is hazy in the distance with a single spire rising above the horizon into the beautifully depicted cloud cover, this breaking only subtly with blues of daylight peering through the sparse leaf cover.
There is a vignette effect Coman employs in the scene by drawing out the foliage along the lower edge of the scene and curving the trees up and around the top. It draws your eye naturally in on the only vibrant pigment in the scene, the bold red roof of the home as it overlooks this peaceful lake.
It is signed in her typical block script lower left "C B Coman" with a stamp on the canvas verso from the art supply shop of W.Schlaus at 19 Broadway, New York.
Charlotte Buell Coman was born in Waterville, New York in 1833 to a family that manufactured shoes. She married at a young age and moved to Iowa as a pioneer housewife, but after the early death of her husband she returned to Waterville, New York in her thirties. She formally studied painting under landscape artist James R. Brevoort in New York before moving to Paris for six years to study under Harry Thomson and Emil Vernier in Paris. She made frequent trips into the French countryside as well as spending time in Holland, but a fire in her studio destroyed much of the work from this period. In France she was exposed to the work of the Barbizon painters and the future course of her work was heavily influenced by their output. In 1879 she exhibited two landscape paintings at Suffolk Street and in the early 1880s she returned to New York.
While her work momentarily focused on still-life and floral scenes, this was very early in her career and she would spend the body of her output focusing on landscapes. Her earliest landscape output centers around French and Dutch countrysides, with her views of Holland mostly constrained to the 1880s. But starting in 1887, her landscapes were predominantly of the United States.
By the turn of the century, Coman was now viewed as one of the leading female artists in the United States. She was in no small part responsible for the introduction of the Barbizon taste in the United States, bringing this plein-air realism with its individual handling of luminosity and atmospheric attention to the impact of light and shadow to the canvas. She showed two paintings at the National Academy of Design in 1875, A Path through the Woods near Waterville, New York and A Lane near St. Valerie, France. Her 1876 work A French Village was praised by critics at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where she was compared favorably with Jean Corot. Her exhibit at the California Mid-Winter exposition in San Francisco won her a medal in 1894. She was awarded the Shaw Memorial Price by the Society of American Artists in 1905 and in 1910 she was elected to be an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design. As a highly active participant in the local artist community, she was a member of the New York Water Color Club, the Art Workers Club and the Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.
Coman continued to paint until her death at the age of 89 in Yonkers, New York. After her death, her reputation lapsed mostly into obscurity until a renewed interest in female artists during the 1970s brought attention to her contributions.
Museums:
- Clearing Off, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- Early Summer, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
Literature & Further Reading:
- E. Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Vol. III, Gründ, 2006, p. 1271
- Dictionary of Artists Who Have Exhibited Works in the Principal London Exhibitions from 1760 to 1893, Graves, 1973, p. 60
- Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, Opitz, 1984, p. 179
- American Women Artists, Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, 1986
- Iowa Artists of the First Hundred Years, Des Moines, 1939, p. 48
Measurements: 22 3/4" H x 28" W x 3 1/4" D [frame]; 13 1/8" H x 18 3/8" W [canvas]
Condition Report:
Unlined. Two surface scratches in trees upper left; small surface scratch to right of steeple mid-right. Under UV is a bit hard to read as the relatively fresh varnish obscures the pigment cast somewhat. We have elected not to send out for conservation as it is bright and clean and we have a philosophy of minimal intervention when possible; however, we can certainly have this restored upon request; contact for a quote. Housed in an early and perhaps original giltwood frame of good quality, minor chips and losses as expected.