1960s “Fiddle Creek” Expressionist California Landscape, Gold and Green, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, by Robert Elsocht

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Sunlight breaks through an autumn canopy and settles on the still water of a woodland creek in “Fiddle Creek,” a … Read more Sunlight breaks through an autumn canopy and settles on the still water of a woodland creek in “Fiddle Creek,” a palette-knife landscape by the Belgian-born San Francisco painter Robert Elsocht (1908–1999). Deep shadow in the undergrowth and along the banks sets off broken flashes of ochre, gold and white among the trees, and their reflections carry the light down into the pool in the foreground. The paint is laid on in moderate to heavy impasto, with broad knife-drawn planes in the water and rocks and dragged, fractured color in the foliage.

Elsocht spent most of his career in the Bay Area, where he painted landscapes that push a recognizable scene toward abstraction. The subject is likely Fiddle Creek, near San Francisco in the Sierra foothills. This canvas, from the 1960s, shows that approach at a confident scale for the subject. It is signed “Robert Elsocht” in white paint at lower right. The verso is inscribed in pencil with the title, the size “28 x 31,” the medium “Oil-Acrylic,” and “J-62.” Pairing a fast-drying acrylic underlayer with oil for the final color and impasto was a common practice of the period. The canvas is housed in a gilded wood frame with a black recessed inner edge.

Photographs were white-balanced to a gray card under daylight-balanced lighting; colors may display slightly differently across screens. See less