Scots' Day at Kennywood

Details

John Kane (1860-1934)
Scots' Day at Kennywood
oil on canvas
19 x 27 in. (48.3 x 60.6 cm.)
Painted circa 1931.

Provenance

G. David Thompson, New York.
Steven L. Rose, Los Angeles, California.
ACA Galleries, New York.
Norman Kahn, New York.
Sotheby's, New York, 29 May 1981, lot 124.
Acquired by the late owner from the above.

Literature

Parnassus, vol. 4, no. 3, March 1932, p. 52, illustrated.
The Art News, vol. 33, no. 11, December 15, 1934, p. 10, illustrated.
L.A. Arkus, John Kane, Painter, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1971, pp. 147-48, 253, no. 70, illustrated.

Exhibited

(Probably) New York, Contemporary Arts Gallery, John Kane Exhibition, September 15-October 16, 1931, no. 5 (as Scotch Day, Kennywood).
New York, Gallery 144 West 13th Street, John Kane Exhibition, March 26-April 15, 1932, no. 10.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Modern Works of Art, Fifth Anniversary Exhibition, November 20, 1934-January 20, 1935, no. 91, illustrated.
(Probably) New York, Valentine Gallery, Memorial Exhibition of Selected Paintings by John Kane, January 26-February 16, 1935, no. 25 (as Scotch Day, Kennywood).
(Probably) Chicago, Illinois, The Arts Club of Chicago, Exhibition of Paintings by John Kane, March 3-24, 1939, no. 18 (as Scots Day, Kennywood Park).
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art; Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Three Self-Taught Pennsylvania Artists: Edward Hicks, John Kane, Horace Pippin, October 21, 1966-February 19, 1967, no. 59, illustrated.
San Francisco, California, Maxwell Galleries, American Art Since 1850, August 2-31, 1968.
New York, ACA Galleries, John Kane, October 14-November 8, 1969, no. 9, illustrated.
New York, ACA Galleries, Four American Primitives: Edward Hicks, John Kane, Anna Mary Robertson, Horace Pippin, February 22-March 11, 1972, no. 12, illustrated.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Celebration, October 25, 1974-January 5, 1975.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, From Kane to Quinn: Self-Taught Artists from Southwestern Pennsylvania, April 5-May 24, 1996.

Brought to you by

Annie Rosen

arosen@christies.com + 1 212 636 2140

Lot Essay

"Scottish scenes were a favorite with [John] Kane, who was born near Edinburgh and came to the United States from Scotland at the age of nineteen. After arriving in America, he traveled about as a manual laborer from job to job, eventually settling outside Pittsburgh, where, as it turned out, he was able to refresh his memory of the kilts and customs of his youth at the annual Scots' Day celebration." (Three Generations of Twentieth-Century Art: The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1972, p. 82) Kennywood, located just outside of Pittsburgh, was originally opened in 1899 as a trolley park, but by 1906 became the site of a family amusement park still open to this day.

Another painting of this same subject (Scotch Day at Kennywood, 1933) is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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