American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Provenance:

Private Collection, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Acquired directly from the above.

Collection of Virginia and Stuart Peltz.

Gratz Gallery, Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Acquired directly from the above.

Private Collection, Pennsylvania.

Exhibited:

New York, National Academy of Design, "101st Annual Exhibition," March 30 - April 11, 1926, no. 143.

Doylestown, Michener Art Museum, "Poetry in Design: The Art of Harry Leith-Ross," May 12, 2006 - February 18, 2007.

Lot Note:

Harry Leith-Ross was a prominent figure in 20th-century American landscape painting, particularly in and around New Hope, Pennsylvania, which he visited regularly from 1914 onward, before settling there permanently in 1935. He is best known for his sensitive depictions of the Bucks County landscape, often in winter, in a blend of both Impressionism and Tonalism. Generally executed en plein air, the best of his paintings capture the subtle light and seasonal changes of his environment, as in The Fredenburgh Farm.

Here, Leith-Ross employs a restricted palette of cool gray, white and lavender, punctuated by the subtle warmth of the red and blue farm buildings situated in the middle ground. This limited color scheme evokes the quiet stillness of a winter landscape, while emphasizing variations in tone that define the snow-covered fields and overcast sky. Leith-Ross's brushstrokes, suggestive in some respects, delineate the skeletal trees in the foreground, their bare branches extending through the top register of the composition. Patches of exposed earth and lingering dried grasses add a textural counterpoint to the broad expanses of snow.

The composition, with its strong horizontal emphasis interrupted by the verticality of the trees, draws the viewer's eye gently through the landscape–to experience, if only visually, the serene yet palpable chill of a rural winter's day in the New Hope countryside.