.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Jane Freilicher Estate.
Among the most admired postwar painters of the American landscape, Jane Freilicher’s 1973 painting, September Landscape, is a classic example of the artist’s lifelong exploration of the Long Island countryside. Beyond fidelity to the subject, New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote “Freilicher’s paintings gradually summon fugitive emotions beyond words.” Based on the sweeping views of fields and Mecox Bay as seen from her Water Mill studio window, Freilicher embarked on this subject matter in the early 1960s, when she and her husband, Joe Hazan, built a house and studio in an open field with expansive vistas. Roberta Smith wrote that the artist “approached landscape through abstraction. […] They may take cues from Hans Hofmann, with whom Freilicher had studied, as well as Helen Frankenthaler’s stain paintings and Willem de Kooning’s swashbuckling odes to the East End” (R. Smith, “Art in Review: Jane Freilicher”, The New York Times, 14 April 2006).
Freilicher came of age in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism and was at the center of a group of influential artists that included Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz. She was a close friend of and muse to a circle of poets, notably John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, who wrote the celebrated “Jane poems” with the artist as their inspiration. A stubbornly independent voice, for over half a century Freilicher steadfastly continued her dedication to her vision in the face of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Minimalism. An early influence for Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz, today her legacy can be seen in the work of a younger generation of painters such as Maureen Gallace, Daniel Heidkamp and Jonas Wood.
Among the most admired postwar painters of the American landscape, Jane Freilicher’s 1973 painting, September Landscape, is a classic example of the artist’s lifelong exploration of the Long Island countryside. Beyond fidelity to the subject, New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote “Freilicher’s paintings gradually summon fugitive emotions beyond words.” Based on the sweeping views of fields and Mecox Bay as seen from her Water Mill studio window, Freilicher embarked on this subject matter in the early 1960s, when she and her husband, Joe Hazan, built a house and studio in an open field with expansive vistas. Roberta Smith wrote that the artist “approached landscape through abstraction. […] They may take cues from Hans Hofmann, with whom Freilicher had studied, as well as Helen Frankenthaler’s stain paintings and Willem de Kooning’s swashbuckling odes to the East End” (R. Smith, “Art in Review: Jane Freilicher”, The New York Times, 14 April 2006).
Freilicher came of age in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism and was at the center of a group of influential artists that included Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz. She was a close friend of and muse to a circle of poets, notably John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, who wrote the celebrated “Jane poems” with the artist as their inspiration. A stubbornly independent voice, for over half a century Freilicher steadfastly continued her dedication to her vision in the face of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Minimalism. An early influence for Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz, today her legacy can be seen in the work of a younger generation of painters such as Maureen Gallace, Daniel Heidkamp and Jonas Wood.