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Lot Essay
This work will be included in Patrick Bertrand's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the work of Theodore Earl Butler.
Richard H. Love writes of the present work by Theodore Earl Butler, "In 1896, he did produce one major work which is clearly his finest canvas...While Monet was working diligently on his river scenes, Butler stayed at home with [his wife] Suzanne and produced his masterpiece. With Suzanne conspicuously absent from the scene, Butler placed his son and daughter directly in the center of a large composition he entitled The Artist's Children, James and Lili. Clearly Butler's masterpiece, this brilliantly colored painting not only foreshadows but surpasses [Édouard] Vuillard's work of five or more years later...although Butler has depicted a corner in his house, the whole scene gives the impression of a small stage, replete with backdrop, stage curtains at left, and a stage exit door at the right. Just as Degas presented to us similar views of an actual theater performance, Butler has granted us a privileged glimpse of his children acting out their roles in the theater of real life, the intimacy of his home...Seeming to shimmer in colorful space, surfaces scintillate and vibrate to present an elusive quality, in which the main subjects have been momentarily interrupted in their skit for all time. Butler's picture is art on several levels; it is synthesis." (Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet's Shadow, Chicago, Illinois, 1985, pp. 167, 170)
Richard H. Love writes of the present work by Theodore Earl Butler, "In 1896, he did produce one major work which is clearly his finest canvas...While Monet was working diligently on his river scenes, Butler stayed at home with [his wife] Suzanne and produced his masterpiece. With Suzanne conspicuously absent from the scene, Butler placed his son and daughter directly in the center of a large composition he entitled The Artist's Children, James and Lili. Clearly Butler's masterpiece, this brilliantly colored painting not only foreshadows but surpasses [Édouard] Vuillard's work of five or more years later...although Butler has depicted a corner in his house, the whole scene gives the impression of a small stage, replete with backdrop, stage curtains at left, and a stage exit door at the right. Just as Degas presented to us similar views of an actual theater performance, Butler has granted us a privileged glimpse of his children acting out their roles in the theater of real life, the intimacy of his home...Seeming to shimmer in colorful space, surfaces scintillate and vibrate to present an elusive quality, in which the main subjects have been momentarily interrupted in their skit for all time. Butler's picture is art on several levels; it is synthesis." (Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet's Shadow, Chicago, Illinois, 1985, pp. 167, 170)