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Woodford Royce (1902-1995). Tulips. browse these categories for related items... Directory: Fine Art: Paintings: Oil: N. America: American: Pre 1940: item # 1125429 Please refer to our stock # 2497 when inquiring.
Raymond Agler Fine Arts 16 Pleasant Street Gloucester, Massachusetts 01930 978-281-5048 $5,500 |
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| Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches, 35 x 30 framed, signed lower right, partial label of Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, 24th Annual Exhibition, 1934, verso, pencil notation on stretcher: "Painted June 1933". What is a still life beyond the simple pleasures of color, line and arrangement? There are studies for the literal-minded which explore the significance of objects presented, especially regarding the 17th C. Dutch masters of the genre. What then are we to divine from a finely realized porcelain flagon of tulips on a wickerwork tabletop, an open pack of Dunhills, butts in an ashtray, a newspaper open to a story headlined "The Iron Mare" above a photo of gesturing figures behind a truck - all this in front of a dark drapery? Charles Sterling, in his now-classic book, "Still Life Painting" (1959), offers a metaphysical approach to this most ancient genre: "...the only thing to be read into a still life is the life the artist imparts to it, for he finds in inanimate things the stuff of dreams." Only a few facts are known about the artist, who was born in Willimantic, Connecticut in 1902. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design twice, both florals: 1933: "Cyclamen" and 1934: "Daffodils II". His address in these years was the art colony of Woodstock, New York, though the Connecticut label apparently has a West Hartford address. His memory will be kept alive, however, by another enigmatic floral still life in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, "In an Old Maid's Window". In this work, a potted geranium shares space with a small ceramic cat on a window ledge opening to a snow-touched hillside landscape. Strange and beautiful. Royce died in Costa Mesa, California in 1995, age 93. | ||
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