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Lot Essay
Edward Redfield painted The Village Store several years after settling with his family in the small, picturesque town of New Hope, Pennsylvania. With his quintessential dashing style and skillful treatment of light and color, Redfield depicts the beauty inherent in his village's winter landscape and quaint way of life.
Redfield generally painted his larger works in a single outdoor session in order to capture the fleeting effects of sunlight and shadow and their interplay among the landscape. It is this immediacy that is Redfield's legacy. J.M.W. Fletcher explains, "His paintings were done in the field and straight onto the canvas, and with great rapidity and force." (Edward Willis Redfield 1869-1965: An American Impressionist, His Paintings and the Man Behind the Palette, Lahaska, Pennsylvania, 1996, p. 1) Redfield's intentional use of muted colors in The Village Store captures the essence of a quiet winter day in the country. Sun from the clear blue sky reflects on the expansive landscape of white below. Redfield successfully encapsulates the exact moment when a storm has passed and all is quiet. He employed this bold technique in all seasons, painting spring scenes blossoming with color, summer scenes bathed in warm sunlight and scenes of autumn rich with earth tones. However, Redfield particularly received acclaim for his ability to paint with vigor the narrow tonal ranges and subtle light of a cold winter day, as exemplified by The Village Store.
His contemporary Guy Pène du Bois, a well-respected art critic and artist, emphasized Redfield's importance to American art, writing in the July 1915 issue of Arts and Decoration, "The Pennsylvania School of landscape painters, whose leader is Edward W. Redfield, is our first truly national expression...It began under the influence of the technique of the French Impressionists. It has restricted itself patriotically to the painting of the typical American landscape." (as quoted in T. Folk, Edward Redfield, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1987, p. 36)
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Edward Redfield's work being compiled by Dr. Thomas Folk.
Redfield generally painted his larger works in a single outdoor session in order to capture the fleeting effects of sunlight and shadow and their interplay among the landscape. It is this immediacy that is Redfield's legacy. J.M.W. Fletcher explains, "His paintings were done in the field and straight onto the canvas, and with great rapidity and force." (Edward Willis Redfield 1869-1965: An American Impressionist, His Paintings and the Man Behind the Palette, Lahaska, Pennsylvania, 1996, p. 1) Redfield's intentional use of muted colors in The Village Store captures the essence of a quiet winter day in the country. Sun from the clear blue sky reflects on the expansive landscape of white below. Redfield successfully encapsulates the exact moment when a storm has passed and all is quiet. He employed this bold technique in all seasons, painting spring scenes blossoming with color, summer scenes bathed in warm sunlight and scenes of autumn rich with earth tones. However, Redfield particularly received acclaim for his ability to paint with vigor the narrow tonal ranges and subtle light of a cold winter day, as exemplified by The Village Store.
His contemporary Guy Pène du Bois, a well-respected art critic and artist, emphasized Redfield's importance to American art, writing in the July 1915 issue of Arts and Decoration, "The Pennsylvania School of landscape painters, whose leader is Edward W. Redfield, is our first truly national expression...It began under the influence of the technique of the French Impressionists. It has restricted itself patriotically to the painting of the typical American landscape." (as quoted in T. Folk, Edward Redfield, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1987, p. 36)
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Edward Redfield's work being compiled by Dr. Thomas Folk.