Morgan Martin
Head of Department
PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED FLORIDA COLLECTION
Lot 33
Oscar Bluemner(1867-1938)Study "Winter Sun" Mill Creek, Elizabeth, New Jersey 5 x 6 3/4 in. (12.7 x 17.1 cm.)
18 November 2021, 14:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$31,562.50 inc. premium
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Specialist, Head of Sale
Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938)
Study "Winter Sun" Mill Creek, Elizabeth, New Jersey
signed with monogramed initials, inscribed and dated 'OFB Eliz Ja 5-25' (lower left)
watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper
5 x 6 3/4 in. (12.7 x 17.1 cm.)
Executed in 1925.
signed with monogramed initials, inscribed and dated 'OFB Eliz Ja 5-25' (lower left)
watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper
5 x 6 3/4 in. (12.7 x 17.1 cm.)
Executed in 1925.
Footnotes
Provenance
Estate of the artist.
Vera (née Bluemner) Kouba (1903-1997), New York, the artist's daughter.
Private collection, New York, 1968.
Debra Force Fine Art, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2004.
Exhibited
New York, Debra Force Fine Art, Oscar Bluemner: Visions of the Modern Landscape, May 12-June 30, 2004, n.p., fig. 20, illustrated.
Born in Hanover Germany in 1867, Oscar Bluemner was encouraged from a young age to become an architect, like his father and grandfather before him. He showed early promise as a draftsman and began studying architecture and painting at the Royal Academy of Design in Berlin in the 1880's. In 1893, Bluemner traveled to the United States in hopes of receiving an architectural commission for the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. After being unable to secure a substantial commission, he traveled to New York, where he became acquainted to Alfred Stieglitz, and officially abandoned architecture for painting in 1910. Under the influence of Stieglitz, Bluemner became a major proponent of Modernism and secured his first solo show at Stieglitz's 291 Gallery in 1915.
While he had abandoned architecture as a profession, his skills for rendering buildings greatly affected his artistic output. Amongst his most important and celebrated works are the highly angular industrial scenes, rendered in vibrant hues, created in the late 1910's and 1920's. These paintings and studies are rigidly structured compositions, often executed in a Cubist Manner and in colors reminiscent of the Fauves. Bluemner's fascination with the various formal, emotional, and spiritual qualities of color resulted in his use of highly saturated swaths of undiluted pigments. His particular obsession with bright red led to him being dubbed the "Vermillionaire," as can be seen in the vivid vermillion hues used in Study "Winter Sun" Mill Creek, Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The present work listed in Bluemner's "Painting Diary" as number 35 in his series of "one hundred watercolors." Bluemner completed only 59 compositions of the series, stopping abruptly after the untimely death of his wife, Lina Bluemner, in 1926. Following this loss, he moved to Braintree, Massachusetts to be closer to his children.
