Lot 132
Henrietta Shore(American, 1880-1963)Waterfall 26 x 26in overall: 28 x 28in
28 April 2015, 18:00 PDT
Los Angeles and San FranciscoSold for US$215,000 inc. premium
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Henrietta Shore (American, 1880-1963)
Waterfall
signed 'H. Shore' (lower left)
oil on canvas
26 x 26in
overall: 28 x 28in
Painted circa 1922
signed 'H. Shore' (lower left)
oil on canvas
26 x 26in
overall: 28 x 28in
Painted circa 1922
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, San Francisco, California.
Exhibited
Monterey, Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, Henrietta Shore: A Retrospective, December 6, 1986 – January 25, 1987.
Oakland, The Oakland Museum, Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists October 13 – December 16, 1990, traveling exhibition, Santa Barbara, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, July 13, 1990 – January 20, 1992.
Palm Springs, Palm Springs Desert Museum.
Literature
P. J. Karlstrom, S. Ehrlich, Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956 Santa Barbara, 1990, p. 151, fig. 29, illus.
In Karlstrom and Ehrlich's book, Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956, they write:
"...[When Henrietta Shore] returned to New York in 1920 for a three-year sojurn, she developed a semi-abstract style given to nature symbolism. In accord with current modernist trends, she pared forms down to essentials and flattened them on the picture plane. Typically, as in ...Waterfall large, planar figurations flow or pulse on the surface in ways that suggest elemental forces.
While synopsizing the forces of nature, these pulsant forms also serve as vessels of thought and desire. As such, they convey feelings of wonder, awe for the vast expanse of the cosmos, esteem for the swelling power of water....the surging white form in Waterfall, shaped like a petal and painted as densely as the mountain, implies the oneness of plants, water, and earth. Indeed the artist conceived nature's forms, and thus her abstractions of them, as independent and unified:
To be true to nature one must be abstract. Nature does not waste her forms. If you would know the clouds - then study the rocks. Flowers, shells, rocks, trees, mountains, hills - all have the same forms within themselves." (p. 150-151)