American Masterpieces from Dryads Green Gallery (Please Scroll Down and Page Ahead--Catalogue is Alphabetical by Artist Last Name)

Artist Name:      Walter Farndon Artist Dates:       1876 - 1964 Title:                  Autumn on the River Painting Date:    Undated Medium:             Oil on Board Signature:            Signed LowerLeft Provenance:        Museum Collection Condition:            Excellent Size Unframed:     14 x 18 Frame Condition:  Gallery Style Artist Best Price:  $48,300 Offered At:           CALL

Curator's Comments: We are pleased once again to be offering a dramatic and truly colorful work by Walter Farndon, 1876-1964, a painters painter of gem-like landscapes who is well known to diligent collectors. Born in Coventry, England, Farndon came to the U.S., settling in Yonkers, NY, and began his career in the early 1890s, painting floral motifs in watercolor for a carpet factory. Determined to become a professional artist despite his family’s financial struggles, he left the carpet factory after a few years to enroll in the free school of the National Academy of Design, where he first studied with Edgar M. Ward. After thirteen attempts, his drawing of a plaster cast of the Discobolus (discus thrower) – which he worked on nightly for an entire month – was finally accepted by the Academy Committee in 1898,  and he was later elected an Associate in 1928, and an Academician in 1937. He also studied with Robert Henri, and was a member of the Society of Independent Artists. He was a member of the New York Water Color Club, the American Watercolor Society, the Allied Artists of America, the American Artists’ Professional League, the Guild of American Painters, the National Arts Club, the New York Society of Painters, the Grand Central Art Galleries and the Salmagundi Club, among others. He exhibited his work and won numerous prizes throughout New York and New England, and at the Pennsylvania Academy, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery and the Boston Art Club. Vose Galleries has mounted five solo exhibitions of Farndon’s oil and watercolor paintings, in 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996 and 2006. Farndon  is primarily an Eastern landscapist who painted en plein air and is best-known for impasto, Impressionist, sometimes near-Expressionist riverside, harbor and shore scenes. His focus was mostly New England, and he traveled extensively along the East Coast, finding favorite seaside locations such as Monhegan Island, Boothbay Harbor, Gloucester, and Nova Scotia. In the 1920s, he painted in Ridgefield, New Jersey, where he was part of a group called the Country Sketch Club, which found its inspiration in nature and they spearheaded the American Impressionist movement.   Farndon died in 1964 in Valley Stream, on NY's Long Island. He put his artistic credo (as seen in notebooks bequeathed to the Smithsonian) simply: "The principal payment for an artist is the personal satisfaction of creating beauty (as personally seen and felt), and giving to viewers some of the pleasure you have experienced in the producing." Farndon's works typically manage to retain the essential pleasure of creation--which is why we are very pleased to offer "Autumn on the River." The brilliant pallette knife flowering trees are sending a signal that natural time is entering the peace and rest of winter--while they burst over the river everything else is waiting for the coming quiet--the empty boat, the empty cottage await the first snow. But the radiant trees also tell us that spring will return because "ripeness is all"--their beauty is ultimately as timeless as the natural cycle. "Autumn on the River" shows how much Farndon understood that art is there to manifest nature's simple magnificence. The work bears a Vose Gallery label on the verso, and was deaccessioned from the Muscarelle Museum of the College of William and Mary.

Earlier Similar Motif ca. 1920

Mahone Bay brought $15,000 at Swann's in 2008

Dockside brought $22,000 at Christies in 2006

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