 |
|---|
 |
|
| Daniel Ridgway Knight |
|
| American, 1839-1924 |
|
 |
|
| “Sur La Terrasse” |
|
| Signed lower right: Ridgway Knight Paris Oil on canvas 35 x 46 inches (88.9 x 116.8 cm) 47 7/8 x 57 ¼ inches framed Provenance Rehs Galleries, NY Kurt E. Schon, Ltd., New Orleans Private collection, NY Literature To be included in the forthco |
|
One of the most highly recognized American expatriate painters of the nineteenth century, Daniel Ridgway Knight was a painter par excellence of the French rural peasant. He and his wife moved permanently to France in 1871, settling in the countryside first in Poissy, and then to a home and garden overlooking the Seine in Rolleboise. Either painting en plein air, or from a glass studio that allowed him to capture natural lighting conditions, he completed his scenes of the young women of the French countryside. While his preferred subject recalled such painters of rural peasants as Millet and Breton, Ridgway Knight exchanged the pensive, melancholy quality of these artists for a cheerful and tender benevolence that sets his apart from his French contemporaries. An exceptional example of Ridgway Knight’s peasant scenes, Sur la Terrasse was most likely painted from the artist’s garden in Rolleboise. Two young women pause from their daily chores and chat along a garden path. Both wear simple patterned country dresses, with shiny boots or wooden clogs, their cheeks soft and rosy rather than flushed from work. They meet along a simple wooden fence that overlooks a misty view of the Seine, with barns and fields on the distant bank. Vibrant pink rosebushes grow over the wooden railing at left, tall sunflowers close the composition at right, and red poppies dot the ground at their feet. An artist who chose to spend his life in the countryside among the people whom he painted, Ridgway Knight presents the girls as pleasant and contented, living in a sunny, green atmosphere that evokes fresh air, clean soil and vigorous health. Exhibited: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Annual, 1858-1910 National Academy of Design, 1870-1878 Boston Athenaeum Paris Salon, 1873-1899, 1921 Brooklyn Art Association, 1878-1887 Boston Art Club, 1880 Munich, 1888 (gold medal) Paris Exposition Universelle, 1889 (silver medal) World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 (medal) Antwerp Exposition, 1894 (medal) Collections: Washington County? Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA The Museum at Drexel University, Phil., PA Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Detroit Institute of Arts Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH Springville Museum of Art, Springville, UT Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NB. |
 |
|