Landscape (recto); Study for a Still Life (verso)

Artist Alfred Maurer (1868 - 1932)

Date1911

MediumOil on board

Dimensions21 3/4 x 18 in. (55.2 x 45.7 cm)
Framed: 26 3/4 in. × 23 in. × 3 in.

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LinePromised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas

Signedl.r.: A.H. Maurer

On View

Not on view

Label TextFrom about 1902 to 1914, Maurer painted most of his Fauvist landscapes outdoors in the Champagne region northeast of Paris. He applied the paint in fast, vigorous brushstrokes. He mainly used bright, pure colors to capture the effects of light on a sunny day. In his Fauvist landscapes from 1910 to 1911, he integrates the white of the paint surface into the composition, emphasizing the luminosity of his colors. Maurer’s Landscape reflects the artist’s emotions inspired by nature, and his quest to create more than a mere copy of the landscape.

On the back side of Landscape is an unfinished still life. Like many financially struggling artists, Maurer sometimes re-used his artist boards. His still lifes from this period are characterized by flat, simplified shapes rendered in unmixed high-keyed color, similar to Matisse’s Fauvist paintings. The space in his composition is compressed so that background and foreground become one. Some of the objects are semi-abstract such as the red gloves, the blue bag, and the flowers. Other areas of the composition are rendered as pure color abstractions.