Lot 65
William Wendt(1865-1946)Creeping Shadows 30 x 36in framed 40 x 46in
13 October 2020, 13:00 PDT
Los AngelesUS$80,000 - US$120,000
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Aaron Bastian
Director
Kathy Wong
Senior Director, Fine Art
William Wendt (1865-1946)
Creeping Shadows
signed and dated 'William Wendt 1928' (lower left) and titled (on the stretcher bar)
oil on canvas
30 x 36in
framed 40 x 46in
Painted in 1928.
signed and dated 'William Wendt 1928' (lower left) and titled (on the stretcher bar)
oil on canvas
30 x 36in
framed 40 x 46in
Painted in 1928.
Footnotes
Provenance
with Stendahl Art Galleries, Los Angeles, California.
with Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, California.
Joseph Brotherton, Los Angeles, California.
with Grand Central Art Galleries, New York.
with Edenhurst Gallery Fine Art, California.
Property of a private collector.
Literature
Ruth Westphal, Plein Air Painters of California: The Southland, Irvine, 1982, p. 172, half page color illustration.
John Alan Walker, Documents on the Life and Art of William Wendt, California's Painter Laureate of the Paysage moralise, Big Pine, 1992, p. 140, no. 149.
Will South, Jean Stern, Janet Blake, In Nature's Temple, The Life and Art of William Wendt, Irvine, 2008, p. 214, half page color illustration.
William Wendt's adoption of an impressionistic style can be dated to 1896-97 when he and his close friend George Garnder Symons were painting together on the Malibu Rancho near Los Angeles. Both men were in the avant-garde of American painters at the time in that they were open to the Impressionist style that had begun in France in the mid-19th century. As it turns out, Southern California was to be a perfect location for translating the bright colors, atmospheric conditions, and shimmering light that were characteristic of the Impressionist style.
Before 1915, Wendt worked with rather tentative, feathery brushstrokes, but thereafter he developed a bold, self-confident and unique style which one critic termed masculine impressionism. It melded impressionism with a distinctly modernist flair. He produced landscapes with a distinct broader, bold brush. His clouds could be compared to white boulders. Eugen Neuhaus wrote of Wendt: "He sings of spring in its rich greens and more often of the joyful quality of summer in typical tawny browns, in decorative broad terms."
Creeping Shadows illustrates Wendt's unique ability to layer texture and color into a composition that draws the eye deep into the landscape. The eye begins at the bottom and gradually travels deep into the top of the canvas, where shadows and hills make one feel the true distance of the scene. Wendt's brushwork meanders through the valley from side to side. The light looks late in the afternoon and the warmth is palpable. Looking south, light comes from the right, as the sun sets in the West.
Ruth Westphal, author of the best-known book Plein Air Painters of California, chose to illustrate this work in her essay on William Wendt. The works chosen for her pair of books on the subject are considered some of the best examples of this genre.
Wendt, now considered a giant among American artists, is often referred to as The Dean of Southern California. Wendt painted exactly what he saw in nature with warm colors and outstanding effects of light and shadow. The tranquility, strength and sense of well-being of his work appealed to a wide audience. It had a sober sort of poetry about it, one critic wrote "like in fine, familiar hymns."
