Julian Alden Weir (American, 1852-1919)
Oil on cradled hardboard panel
50 x 39.5 in.
J. Alden Weir was one of the leading early American Impressionist. He studied at the National Academy School in New York and in Europe at the École des Beaux-Arts with Jean Leon Gerome. He developed his impressionistic style while painting outdoors with Jules Bastien-Lepage and was influenced by James MacNeil Whistler. Weir helped found the Society of American Artists, which rebelled against the National Academy's standards. He promoted leading-edge French paintings, including the collection in America of work by his friend Bastien-Lepage and also of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet. He organized the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced avant-garde European art to the American public, and served as President of the National Academy of Design from 1915 to 1917.
Five years after Weir’s death, this piece was exhibited in the J. Alden Weir Memorial Exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, (1924, lent by Robert C. Vose); and the Provincetown Past and Present Exhibition at The Chrysler Art Museum of Provincetown, Provincetown, MA, (1958).
