$55,000
Estimate: $60,000 - $100,000
American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists
Auction: December 6, 2015 2:00:00 PM EDT
Oil on canvas
36 x 30 in. (91.4 x 76.2cm)
Provenance: The Artist.
By descent in the family to his son, Jean Paul Nuse.
By descent in the family to his son, Gene Nuse, Missouri.
Freeman's, sale of June 27, 2004, lot 193.
Acquired from the above.
Private Collection, New Jersey.
NOTE:
According to Robin Nuse, the artist's grand-daughter, the two figures on the left of the painting were posed for by the artist's son Paul, the remaining figure on the right was his other son, Oliver.
"The second group of Nuse's figurative paintings included several series that place his figures in landscape settings. Among them was a succession of images that Nuse called "boys in the glen," and he considered these to be among his most important work. Again, following a long academy tradition, this series placed a group of figures (in this case children), unclothed as nymphs, walking or sitting near shimmering pools of water or in woodland tableaux. Although painted in realistic nature scenes, these images have a slightly different feel from his other figurative work. While Nuse still used his own children as models, he draws them more anonymously, and the overall effect is one of innocents in a storybook setting, almost as if we were seeing a fairy tale brought to life. The suggestion of mythological creatures gamboling through the woods is heightened by Nuse's use of sunlight as an overall pattern, dappling water, trees, and children alike".
["Roy Nuse - Figures And Landscapes" published by James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 2002, from as essay by Erika Jaeger Smith, "Roy C. Nuse - A Gentleman of the Old School", p. 21.]
We wish to thank Robin Nuse for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.