American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Papageorge Family Collection

Literature

Art of Imagination and Enduring Quality, Thomas Colville Fine Art, New York, 1989, pp. 26-27 (illustrated).

Note

Robert Spencer arrived in Pennsylvania in 1906 and settled in various villages along the Delaware Valley. He was first acquainted with Edward Redfield, who had a studio in Point Pleasant near Spencer’s home. Although Redfield had already gained a stature within the community as well as on a national level, Spencer never became close friends with the Father of Pennsylvania Impressionism, and did not necessarily adopt his style of painting either. However, he would make strong ties with the other leader of the group, William L. Lathrop, whose tonal ranges may have influenced Spencer’s early works such as the present one. As Thomas Folk states however, “no artist had a greater influence on Spencer’s style” than Daniel Garber, whom the artist met in the summer of 1909, the year our painting was executed. At that time, Spencer not only studied with Garber at his home and studio in Cuttalossa Creek, near Lumberville, but he also lived with him and his family.

Albeit an early example from the artist’s oeuvre, The Stone Mill already combines the hallmarks of Spencer’s later celebrated style: an old mill sits by the river, nestled in the hills and sheltered by bare trees. The only access to it is a dirt road, on which figures walk, and that helps guide the viewer’s eye towards the central building–the true subject of the painting. As Brian Peterson states: “this is not a grand moment greatly conceived, but a humble, everyday scene that is also oddly beautiful.” Spencer’s Garber-like fragmented, precise brushwork is at play in The Stone Mill, which stands as a jewel of harmonious pale, pastel-like colors. Through this camaieu of blues, grays and purples, which are alternatively used for the hills, the river or the figures approaching the mill, Spencer blends together all elements (building, landscape and figures), hereby showing the vital link, and interdependent relationship between nature, humans and their daily activities.