Item Details:

THE STREAM

CHARLES ROSWELL BACON

IMPRESSIONISM, 1910

Original Oil Painting on Canvas

Stone Lithograph

Size: 32 x 40 in; 81.3 x 101.6 cm

Signed: Recto, lower left

American Impressionism at its finest. The landscape and figure painter Charles Roswell Bacon met his wife Elizabeth Chase at the newly-formed Art Students' League in New York where they took classes under Kenyon Cox before heading off to Paris to study for year under Lefebvre and Collin. Upon their return, they married and settled for awhile in Ridgefield, Connecticut where they started a family. The present figure painting by Charles Bacon is characteristic of the lyrical, impressionistic palette the artist adopted after his exposure to the work of Whistler and even more directly to the work of the American painter, Theodore Robinson. On one of his early trips to France, Bacon lived and painted for an extended period in Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, alongside Robinson who became an intimate friend and mentor. Despite his successes as an artist, Charles Bacon suffered from severe depression-the same illness which led his father, Otto Bacon, an importer of marble, to drink himself to death after the failure of his business. Several months after the Armory Show, Charles Bacon took his own life in his studio, which was crammed with many unfinished canvases.

Provenance: Gift of the artist to Irving Kent Hall, New York circa 1910. Thence by descent to the current owner. Exhibited: New York, National Academy of Design, Annual Exhibition, 1913, No. 35. According to Irving Hall's grandson, Mr. Hall and Charles Bacon were personal friends. The artist had hoped to show the present work at the 1913 American Academy of Design in New York, but was unable to afford a frame. So that The Stream could be shown, Mr.Hall purchased a frame for it, and, in gratitude, the artist gave the painting to him; it is still in its original frame. According to family tradition, Peggy Bacon, daughter of the artist, modeled for both figures in this enchanting composition.