John Koch

(1909-1978)

Summer Night 78 x 44in (198.1 x 111.8cm)

Footnotes

Provenance
The artist.
Kraushaar Galleries, New York.
Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, acquired from the above.
Dr. Rebecca Trent Kirkland, by bequest from the above, 2012.
Gift to the present owner from the above, 2013.

John Koch is recognized as one of the leading Realist painters of the 20th century, best known for his elegant depictions of fashionable life in and around New York City. Summer Night is a significant example of the genre, painted on a monumental scale, that showcases Koch's adept skill for arranging interactions and intrigue between his subjects. The scene suggests a refined home's porch, captured at a moment after an evening gathering. There is the sensibility of leisurely, relaxed elegance, while the meticulously arranged still life elements and relationships between the figures enliven the scene with narrative.

Koch was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1909 to businessman Edward John Koch and Marian Joan Koch. He was raised in the university town of Ann Arbor, Michigan and beginning at the age of fourteen, he briefly studied charcoal drawing. During his high school years, he spent two summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts where he attended lectures by Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930) at the Cape Cod School of Art. After graduating high school, Koch went to Paris at the age of nineteen and stayed for five years where he studied independently and supported himself by drawing commissioned portraits. Koch credited the city as the place where he learned the major lessons of his life as a painter and credited the Louvre as one of his greatest teachers. After his time spent in Paris, Koch returned to New York City. In 1935, he married Dora Zaslavsky (1904-1987) and had his first New York exhibition at Valentine Dudensing Gallery. A few years later, in 1939, he signed on with Charles W. Kraushaar Gallery, where his first show sold out. That same year, his painting East River (circa 1930) was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum of Art and was one the first museum acquisitions of his work. He continued to exhibit at Kraushaar Galleries regularly and it was there that Siesta (Lot 18) and Summer Night (Lot 19) were first shown. His time working with the gallery brought him great commercial success for the remainder of his career.

At the turn of the 1940s, Koch's success and recognition continued to grow. From 1942-45 he joined the United Service Organizations (USO) in the art sketching and portrait division in veterans' hospitals and from 1944-46, Koch taught figure painting at the Art Students League in New York. During these years, he became a featured artist of classical portraits at Portraits Inc., which further allowed him to earn a substantial income. Additional recognition and fame came in 1950, when his painting The Monument (1950) was exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's national competitive exhibition American Painting Today and later that year, his work was featured on the cover of Life magazine for the first time. His work would grace the cover of Life again in 1955, when the publication chose his portrait of Princess Margaret (1930-2002) as their cover illustration. Koch continued to gain recognition for his work as a figurative artist, receiving several awards from the National Academy of Design in 1952, 1959, 1962 and 1964.

With combined funds from his commissioned portraiture and Dora teaching music lessons, the Kochs were able to support a sophisticated lifestyle in New York and in 1954, moved into a fourteen-room apartment in the famed El Dorado building on the Upper Westside. Many of Koch's works depict well-dressed figures socializing and living out their lives in spacious and well-decorated interiors of New York apartments, often using his own apartment at the El Dorado. Koch painted numerous domestic still lives, interior scenes of his studio, men and women interacting at parties and at home, children playing, and attractive nudes. While much of his work focuses on close relationships between his subjects, Koch never posed models physically together, but rather carefully arranged compositions based on working from models posed individually.

Summer Night is an impressively large-scale, multifigure composition showing a group at leisure at a country home on a warm summer's night. There is an atmosphere of intrigue between the figures who are painted under dramatic lighting effects with warm highlights and strong cast shadows. While the composition is visually unified, there are disconnected vignettes within the work of people engrossed in a pair one-on-one or isolated alone. The young men watching television in the foreground are scantily clothed, presumably due to the summer heat. While a homoerotic sensibility can be found in many works in Koch's oeuvre, the figures are not sexualized but rather are shown as attractive, partially nude models with an air of innuendo. Behind these men, a woman huddles close to another male to light a cigarette alongside a side table full of intricately depicted bottles and glassware. Another woman in the background displays more standoffish body language with crossed arms, as a man in the shadows appears to be engaged in conversation with her.

Summer Night is a complex and curated, yet seemingly carefree scene. While Koch's best works show a world refined and reformed, they are engaging and generate commentary on a facet of society and relationships. As exemplified in Summer Night, Koch's subjects are unique in their perspective and for their blending of domestic idleness and social commentary.