Signed 'R.S. Bredin' bottom right, oil on canvas
14 x 14 1/4 in. (35.6 x 36.2cm)

Provenance

Salmagundi Club Auction Sale, New York, New York, n.d.
Dr. Tom Folk's Art Gallery, Bernardville, New Jersey.
Acquired directly from the above in 1993.
Collection of Bonnie O'Boyle, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Exhibited

"Earth, River and Light: Masterworks of Pennsylvania Impressionism," James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, September 21-December 29, 2002; and Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut, June 28-September 28, 2003 (traveling exhibition).

"Objects of Desire: Treasures from Private Collections, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, September 16, 2005-January 15, 2006.

"Rae Sloan Bredin: Harmony and Power," James A . Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, March 24-June 15, 2018 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue p. 84.)

Literature

Thomas Folk, The Pennsylvania Impressionists, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1997, plate 38 (illustrated).

Brian H. Peterson, Pennsylvania Impressionism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, p. 102, plate 11 (illustrated).

Note

Although he received many portrait commissions throughout his career, Rae Sloan Bredin was most recognized for his languid garden scenes set in the region of New Hope during the spring and summer. Contrary to most Pennsylvania Impressionists who were famous for their desolated scenes, Bredin chose to incorporate figures in his landscapes, a trend which was common among French impressionists. He often used his family members as subjects, as exemplified in the present work where one can identify painter Mary Elizabeth Price and Elizabeth Friedly Price, Bredin's sisters-in-law. The painting conveys an underlying sense of calm, typified by the luxuriant light in which the figures bathe in the most flattering way. Anchored by the majestic blooming tree, the scene poetically recalls the artist's own wedding to Alice Rachel Price on April 14, 1914, in a ceremony at Primrose Farm in Solebury "under the boughs of a flowering apple tree."