Estimate: $80,000 - $120,000
American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists
Auction: December 6, 2015 2:00:00 PM EDT
Signed 'Robt Spencer' bottom right; also inscribed with artist and title verso, oil on canvas
25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2cm)
Provenance: Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, New York.
Acquired from the above.
Private Collection, New Jersey.
NOTE:
While his style was influenced by and honed alongside other Pennsylvania Impressionists such as Daniel Garber and William Langson Lathrop, whose work was frequently of rural settings, Robert Spencer often uniquely depicted imagery of laborers, factories, and other urban settings. Similarly to Garber, Spencer was interested in figurative painting, but instead of painting familiar individuals, he often preferred to depict anonymous members of a crowd. He once said, "it is the human side that interests me...a landscape without a building or a figure is a very lonely picture to me. I love the cities, the towns--the crowds....It is a curious contradiction that I live in the country". The present painting is an excellent example of the artist's statement above, with its dynamic groupings of people on the dock of a harbor. Spencer also favored more subdued tones and employed a bolder, looser style of brushwork and patterning than some of his contemporaries. His color palette, as seen in the present lot, utilizes a range of cold and warm gray and brown tones, while blending blues, reds, and violets to fashion subtle synchronization of color.