American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Papageorge Family Collection

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Roy Celeveland Nuse met his wife, Ellen Guthrie, at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where the artist had enrolled in 1905. The pair married in 1911 and went on to have six children, who would become Nuse's favorite models and subjects, and who he would stage in his beloved and peaceful Rushland Valley, nearby the Neshaminy and Mill Creeks. The present work depicts Nuse's two eldest sons, (Jean-)Paul and Olivier, playing with a paper boat in the creek, while their youngest sister, Dorothy (the subject of many other paintings including Lot 86, which shows her by a rose garden) stands undressed on the river bend, gazing at the viewer moments before entering the cold water. While Nuse was described in his lifetime as an assidous and very serious painter, he was also known for the love and devotion he professed to his family, friends and neighbors. This strong fatherly bond is clearly pictured here as Dorothy is looking straight at the viewer (her father, in fact) with an endearing, slightly mischiefed air. As Nuse explained: "I used my children as models because they were close to me," thus shyly implying "a loving fondness for his brood" more than just a handy proximity according to Erika Jaeger Smith.

The oil belongs to a long series of canvases which show Nuse's children in the woods, and which the artist referred to as "boys in the glen." Considered amongst his best work, such oils attest to Nuse's academic training as one could easily mistake them for mythological tableaux of woodland nymphs and gods. The shimmering colors and dappling light also contribute to this idyllic vision, in which the privacy of the moment and the intimacy of the setting blend to make the viewer feel proviledged to witness such pure, innocent and enchanting beauty.