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Lot Essay
One of the founding members of the 1913 Armory Show, Brooklyn-born Walt Kuhn importantly facilitated the introduction of European Modernism to America. Having studied at the Académie Colarossi in Paris and the Royal Academy in Munich, modern masters such as Paul Cézanne left lasting impressions on his work. After his return to the United States, Kuhn became a major proponent of American Modernism by forming the Association of American Painters and Sculptors alongside fellow artist Arthur B. Davies. The Association’s first and only exhibition, the historic Armory Show exposed the American public to progressive new art for the first time. In his famous series of circus performers and showgirls, including the present early example, Bareback Rider, Kuhn applies the innovative styles he helped propagate to the thoroughly modern subject of the New York theater scene.
Although Kuhn also painted still lifes and landscapes, his best-known works are striking figural studies of stage entertainers. His mother’s love of theater left an imprint at a young age, and in the early 1920s, Kuhn worked as a director and designer on Broadway to support his family. Kuhn’s intimate relationships behind-the-scenes of theater productions translated into his focused canvases. In his portraits, as epitomized by Bareback Rider, the artist captures performers at close-range in costume and make-up, but strips the glamor of the stage in exchange for the reality of life behind the curtain. Inherently modern works in both execution and subject matter, Kuhn’s images of theater life mirror the works of “The Eight,” a group of artists including William Glackens, Robert Henri, Everett Shinn and John Sloan, who sought to capture scenes of everyday urban life. Meanwhile, the confident sexuality and directness of Kuhn’s female figures recall avant-garde European progression and anticipate Richard Prince’s provocative nurse series. Curator John I.H. Baur reflected on Kuhn’s complex depictions, “There is no mistaking the artist’s intent, his interest in the tragic and human side of his character rather than its traditional glamour, and one is led to the conclusion that Kuhn’s art today springs from the same general current which produced the pallid harlots and dance hall queens of Toulouse-Lautrec over a quarter of a century ago” (J. I.H. Baur, quoted in Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work, Columbus, 1978, p. 104).
In Bareback Rider, Kuhn underscores the showgirl’s multi-faceted personality through the contrast between her confident physical pose and distanced facial expression. Kuhn purposefully depicts his subject free of excess detail and in front of a simplified background, elements the artist would return to again and again in his later paintings. As a result, Bareback Rider stands at the beginning of the most important work of Kuhn’s oeuvre. Indeed, Paul Bird wrote of the significance of Bareback Rider on the first page of his 1940 Kuhn monograph: “We begin with a prophetic picture. Not until years afterward did the artist understand this painting’s relation to his own career. In the limbs and torso is the same vibrant tension that so completely characterizes a later Walt Kuhn figure. Here it first appeared, at the time unexpected and unexplained” (P. Bird, 50 Paintings by Walt Kuhn, New York, 1940, p. 1).
Although Kuhn also painted still lifes and landscapes, his best-known works are striking figural studies of stage entertainers. His mother’s love of theater left an imprint at a young age, and in the early 1920s, Kuhn worked as a director and designer on Broadway to support his family. Kuhn’s intimate relationships behind-the-scenes of theater productions translated into his focused canvases. In his portraits, as epitomized by Bareback Rider, the artist captures performers at close-range in costume and make-up, but strips the glamor of the stage in exchange for the reality of life behind the curtain. Inherently modern works in both execution and subject matter, Kuhn’s images of theater life mirror the works of “The Eight,” a group of artists including William Glackens, Robert Henri, Everett Shinn and John Sloan, who sought to capture scenes of everyday urban life. Meanwhile, the confident sexuality and directness of Kuhn’s female figures recall avant-garde European progression and anticipate Richard Prince’s provocative nurse series. Curator John I.H. Baur reflected on Kuhn’s complex depictions, “There is no mistaking the artist’s intent, his interest in the tragic and human side of his character rather than its traditional glamour, and one is led to the conclusion that Kuhn’s art today springs from the same general current which produced the pallid harlots and dance hall queens of Toulouse-Lautrec over a quarter of a century ago” (J. I.H. Baur, quoted in Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work, Columbus, 1978, p. 104).
In Bareback Rider, Kuhn underscores the showgirl’s multi-faceted personality through the contrast between her confident physical pose and distanced facial expression. Kuhn purposefully depicts his subject free of excess detail and in front of a simplified background, elements the artist would return to again and again in his later paintings. As a result, Bareback Rider stands at the beginning of the most important work of Kuhn’s oeuvre. Indeed, Paul Bird wrote of the significance of Bareback Rider on the first page of his 1940 Kuhn monograph: “We begin with a prophetic picture. Not until years afterward did the artist understand this painting’s relation to his own career. In the limbs and torso is the same vibrant tension that so completely characterizes a later Walt Kuhn figure. Here it first appeared, at the time unexpected and unexplained” (P. Bird, 50 Paintings by Walt Kuhn, New York, 1940, p. 1).