Impressionist Views

Works of American impressionism are on view at A. J. Kollar Fine Paintings

This November, A. J. Kollar Fine Paintings highlights works of American impressionist landscapes. From Italian water scenes to snowscapes to spring mornings, the show encompasses the genre from the late-19th to early-20th centuries. Works by John Singer Sargent, John La Farge, Edward Willis Redfield, Robert Vonnoh, Henry Hobart Nichols and Theodore Robinson, among others, will be on view. Though he is primarily known for his portraits, Sargent used the “spontaneous” medium of watercolor to capture his environment.“it is known that Sargent painted the majority of watercolors on location for his own personal pleasure,” says gallery owner Allan J. Kollar.“they were a record of his ever-changing environment; an artist’s view, to say the least, and often a view few artists dared to attempt. Sargent was

constantly challenging himself with his perspective of a location, figures in motion, a sensitivity to light, silence, and/or nature.” The Jetty at San

Vigilio exemplifies that challenge of perspective with an almost abstract foreground, the scene slowly coming together in the viewer’s eyes as they explore and discover the rest of the painting.

Vonnoh’s Pleasant Valley, Old Lyme Connecticut presents a similar sort of visual deception, with the titular valley obstructed by late winter birch trees. Kollar suggests that the composition may have been inspired by the work of Camille Pissarro, who was exhibiting in Paris whilevonnoh spent time in Giverny, in the Normandy region of France. He adds,“pissarro had a series of late winter landscape paintings in mauve pigment with the composition visible through deciduous trees.this work was painted in 1908, a time when Vonnoh came back from France for a short stay in Connecticut before

traveling back to France.”

Robinson, too, spent time in Giverny.there he visited founder of French Impressionism Claude Monet in the late 1880s, and Robinson’s own paintings were pivotal to growing awareness of American impressionism. In his Country Road, a road blanketed with recently fallen snow leads the viewer to an unknown destination. In 1873, John La Farge completed his first major mural in Boston’s

Trinity Church. Winter Thaw was painted in that same period, serving as a break from the large formats the artist was being awarded.the subject matter as well, a hazy, bucolic scene, is a deviation from religious iconography. “There is a sense of weightlessness recorded in this oil painting, as the filtered light crosses the landscape creating a poetic glow as a season changes,” Kollar says.

The American Impressionist Landscape Exhibition opens November 1 at A.J. Kollar Fine Paintings and hangs through December 1.

John La Farge (1835-1957), Winter Thaw, 1874. Oil on panel, 9¼ x 12 in., signed and dated lower left: ‘J. Lafarge 1874’.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), TheJetty at San Vigilio. Watercolor and pencil on paper,13¾ x 211/8 in., signed lower left.

Theodore Robinson (1852-1896), Country Road. Oil on canvas, 13¾ x 9¾ in., signed lower left: ‘Th. Robinson’.

Robert Reid (1862-1919), The Brook, ca. 1906. Oil on canvas, 29½ x 26¼ in., signed lower right: ‘Robert Reid’.

Henry Hobart Nichols (1869-1962), Snow Fall.Oil on canvas, 25 x 30¼ in., signed lower left (partially obscured by artist reworking); inscribed with title on verso.

Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933), Pleasant Valley – Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1908. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in., signed lower left: ‘Vonnoh’; titled on verso stretcher.