$45,000
Estimate: $20,000 - $30,000
American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists
Auction: June 3, 2018 3:00:00 PM EDT
Signed 'C.H. Davis' bottom left, oil on canvas
50 1/2 x 77 1/2 in. (128.3 x 196.9cm)
Executed circa 1900.
Provenance: Sotheby's, New York, sale of May 24, 2001, lot 36.
Acquired directly from the above sale.
Private Collection, New Jersey.
EXHIBITED:
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1901, no. 311 (won Walter Lippincott Prize).
The Pan American Exposition, Buffalo, New York, 1901 (won Silver Medal).
The Universal Exposition, Saint Louis, Missouri, 1904 (won Silver Medal).
LITERATURE:
Valerie Ann Leeds and Tara Contractor, Charles Harold Davis (1856-1933): Mystic Impressionist, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, September 26, 2015-January 3, 2016 (discussed pp. 12-14 in the exhibition catalogue).
NOTE:
With its ambitious size and dazzling effects of sunlight and shadow over the New England coast, "Summer Clouds" gathered general acclaim when it was exhibited in Philadelphia in 1901. In a review of the Pan American Exposition the same year, Mary Brown Hartt described the painting as "full of feeling for the modeled firmness of sunlit knoll and hollow, for opulent sunshine and rich shadows; for the clear brilliancy of summer seas and skies. This single canvas makes an impression of Davis's mingled strength and subtlety not soon to be forgotten".