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Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
OSCAR BLUEMNER Group of 4 landscape pencil drawings.
German Countryside, 1902. Dated and annotated in pencil, lower recto * Leonia, 1906. Dated and titled in pencil, lower right recto * Singac, New Jersey, 1908. Dated and titled in pencil, lower left recto, and annotated in pencil, verso * Rockaway River, Brooklyn, 1908. Signed with the artist's monogram, dated and titled, in pencil, upper left recto, and annotated in pencil, verso. Various sizes and conditions.
Provenance: Private collection, New Hampshire.
Bluemner (1867-1938), one America's finest Modernist colorists, was overlooked for the majority of his career. Now however his place alongside Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Marsden Hartley and Max Weber--all fellow exhibitors at Alfred Stieglitz's "291" Gallery in New York--is understood and he ranks among the group of most modern and influential artists in America during the early 20th century.
Developing a friendship with Stieglitz around 1911, and after a drawn-out litigation to rightfully claim his recognition and compensation for designing the Bronx, New York courthouse, Bluemner decided to turn completely to painting in 1912 and embarked on a seven month European voyage. Upon his return, after exposure to works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, as well as the Fauves and Cubists, Bluemner's work reflected a dramatic shift toward the bright, streamlined style that would define his work and parallel the developments made by other American modern artists during the early 20th century. Like Edward Hopper, Bluemner traveled widely along the east coast, in the countryside surrounding New York, and made numerous watercolor studies of landscapes and buildings, virtually all of which are devoid of human presence.
