FRIESEKE, Frederick Carl
(b. 1874, Owosso, d. 1939, New York)

Lady in a Garden

c. 1912
Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago

By around 1910, Impressionism and its related styles were universal in North America. They had significance in catalyzing the formulation by individual artists' groups of their own visual idioms. In this respect, the painting of Frederick Frieseke was an extension of the North American tradition in Impressionist figure painting.

Frieseke belonged to the third American generation to paint at Giverny. After the painters of 1887 and shortly thereafter had spent their summers there and returned to the US, there had been a second wave of Giverny tourism in the 1890s. Garden scenes and nudes provided the circle with new motifs that were adopted and adapted by the next, third generation.

Frieseke had begun by painting earthy interiors, but visits to Giverny in and after 1900 led him to abandon them in favour of open-air scenes, of which Lady in a Garden is typical.




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