Estimate: $60,000 - $100,000
American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Collection of Charles and Virginia Bowden
Auction: December 4, 2022 2:00 AM EDT
Signed ‘Orville Bulman’ bottom right; also signed verso, oil on canvas
36 1/8 x 40 in. (91.8 x 101.6 cm.)
Executed in 1967.
Provenance
Hammer Galleries, New York, New York (per stamp on stretcher verso), by 1967.
Private Collection.
Edward and Deborah Pollack Fine Art, Palm Beach, Florida.
Acquired directly from the above.
Private Collection, Florida.
John H. Surovek Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida.
Acquired directly from the above.
Private Collection, Tennessee.
Literature
Hammer Galleries, Orville Bulman, Recent Paintings, October 31 through November 11, 1967, no. 58 (illustrated).
Deborah C. Pollack, Orville Bulman: An Enchanted Life and Fantastic Legacy, Blue Heron Press, Palm Beach, 2006, p. 212 (illustrated).
Note
A highly prolific artist, Orville Bulman was a successful businessman turned painter. Michigan born, Bulman maintained a second home in Palm Beach by 1946 and became a highly popular figure there. He also travelled throughout the Southern United States, as well as the Caribbean and Haiti. He felt a kinship with Haiti, and the art and people of that country served as an important inspiration for his painting. As in the present work, Bulman’s best canvases are characterized by their bright colors, tropical vistas replete with jungle animals, and overall sense of whimsy, which recall the mysterious, often mystical, art of French artist Henri Rousseau, also known as Le Douanier Rousseau.