New Acquisitions
Children Fishing, 1897
18¹⁄₁₆ x 32⅛ inches
Inscribed, signed, and dated lower right: Copyright [illegible] by / CHAS · C · CURRAN · / 1897; on stretcher bar: —Children Fishing— / —Charles. C. Curran.— and Great Expectations on a label affixed to the stretcher
Provenance
Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, New York, November 29, 1990, lot 54 (as Children Fishing)
Private collection, Baltimore, Maryland, acquired from the above
Private collection, by descent from above
Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, March 25, 2015, lot 42
Private collection, Nantucket, Massachusetts
Exhibited
National Academy of Design, New York, New York, 1898, no. 157 (as Children Fishing)
Literature
Maria Naylor, Exhibition of the National Academy 1861-1900 Vol. 1(Kennedy Galleries, Inc., 1973), 209, no 157, (as Children Fishing).
Related Work
Lotus Lilies, 1888, oil on canvas, 18 × 32 inches, signed lower right: Lotus Lilies/Chas. C. Curran 1888; Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois
Note
At the start of his career, critics observed that Midwestern artist Charles Courtney Curran’s subjects and figure types were perceived as distinctly American, even as his technical virtuosity was regarded as French. His carefully controlled contours of human profiles, strong surface patterning, and harmonious color arrangements demonstrate an art-historical awareness shaped by training both in the United States and abroad. Curran was especially known for his mastery of the idealized human form, developed through rigorous study from casts at the Art Students League and the Académie Julian.[1]
[1] Helen A. Cooper and Nancy Rivard Shaw, et al. A Private View: American Paintings from the Manoogian Collections (Yale University Art Gallery & Detroit Institute of Arts, 1993), 27.