Estimate: $50,000 - $80,000
American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Papageorge Family Collection
Auction: June 4, 2023 3:00 PM EDT
Signed 'John Folinsbee-' bottom right; also titled on upper stretcher verso, oil on canvas
32 x 40 in. (81.3 x 101.6cm)
In a period white gold sgraffito Arts and Crafts frame.
Provenance
The Artist.
A gift from the above in 1934.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, until 1973.
Private Collection.
John H. Garzoli, San Rafael, California.
Acquired directly from the above in 1985.
A Private International Corporate Collection.
Sotheby's New York, sale of November 28, 2001, lot 87.
Acquired directly from the above sale.
Jim's of Lambertville, Lambertville, New Jersey.
Acquired directly from the above.
The Papageorge Family Collection, Carversville, Pennsylvania.
Exhibited
"One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Annual Exhibition," Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 29-March 19, 1933, no. 63.
"Annual Exhibition," Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, October 4-31, 1933.
"Endowment Collection Exhibition," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, October 1934.
Literature
Folinsbee 1920s–40s Stockbook, p. 40.
Houston Texas Post, June 2, 1940 (illustrated).
James M. Alterman, New Hope for American Art, Jim's of Lambertville, Lambertville, 2005, p. 146 (illustrated).
Kirsten M. Jensen, Folinsbee Considered, Hudson Hills Press, Manchester, 2013, no. 503, pp. 84 (discussed), 260 (illustrated), 299-300 (listed); also accessible on the Artist's online Catalogue Raisonné at https://www.johnfolinsbee.org/ under no. JFF.503.
Note
Mill Dam, a magnificent winter landscape from one of the most radical years in Folinsbee’s career, illustrates the artist’s shift towards greater simplification and rhythmic compositions, characterized by an abandonment of his earlier impressionistic, fragmented style. Here, Folinsbee applied his paint in large, generous and fluid swaths stretching across the canvas, so as to imitate the rapid flow of water. The restricted yet more grounded color palette also gives the work all its rawness, which garnered Folinsbee respect outside of the Bucks County circle, and among New York’s avant-garde.