Antique Will Henry Stevens Landscape Pastel Painting in Green and Sky Blue with Gilt Frame

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Description

Exceptionally gifted, American modernist painter, Will Henry Stevens, captures our wanderlust with one of his earlier artworks. With such a … Read more Exceptionally gifted, American modernist painter, Will Henry Stevens, captures our wanderlust with one of his earlier artworks. With such a large devotion to experimentation, his work spans many genres and evolves significantly throughout his lifetime.

Along with being a naturalist, his interest in nature as subject matter was inspired by his well-documented enthusiasm for the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Stevens eventually came to the teachings of Lao-Tzu and Sung painting, and its underlying philosophy of the artist as an extension of nature. What Stevens felt all of these diverse sources held in common was an attitude toward the world, summed up in Stevens' own statement, "The best thing a human can do in life is to get rid of his separateness or selfness and hand himself over to the nature of things—to this mysterious thing called the Universal Order, that any artist must sense...In human nature, we are consciously trying to achieve an order. And we are distressed by it, by the task of patterning it on an Order that is not personal or human—that is what I call spiritual."

Known for his paintings and tonal pastels depicting the rural Southern landscape, and later, abstractions of nature and non-objective works, Stevens moved away from studio-oriented easel painting and toward the use of more versatile materials and gestural techniques. This suited his propensity to wander, work, and teach out-of-doors, and he began to rely on media and methods that encouraged spontaneity. He began to experiment with a medium of his own invention, grinding and mixing his own pastel chalks, which enabled him to develop a freer creative process. Perhaps his most interesting technical innovation was to allow random strokes and blots of color to float onto and penetrate a prepared wet paper, thus defining of themselves the starting point for the emergence of the final image. Stevens' style had become characterized by the direct, gestural application of lines and tones, which were energized by clusters of flickering color notations. This visual shorthand had parallels with some of the most advanced techniques of his day.

Today, his work spans the collections of over forty museums in the US, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

(Source: Wikipedia "Will Henry Stevens")

This piece is signed and professionally mounted in a beautiful gilded wooden frame.

D E T A I L S

♦ artist: Will Henry Stevens (1881-1949)
♦ untitled landscape
♦ medium: pastel chalk
♦ additional images available upon request
♦ layaway option is available for this item with no additional fee

✂ - - - - - m e a s u r e m e n t s:

Sight: 11.25" height x 10.25" width, 28.6cm x 26cm
Frame: 16.5" height x 15.5" width 41.9cm x 39.4cm
Frame thickness: 1", 2.5cm
Weight: 3.35 Lbs

C O N D I T I O N

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