68
JOHN FOLINSBEE
"Perseverance Mill", 1925-1926
- Provenance: Estate of the Artist, 1978; Private Collection, Florida
- Exhibited: New York, New York, The Salmagundi Club, "Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings", 1926, no. 61; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "Sesquicentennial International Exposition", July 5 - December 1926; New Hope, Pennsylvania, Phillips Mill Community Association, "Exhibition of Fine Arts", May 17 - June 17, 1930
- Literature: "Phillips Mill Exhibition at New Hope, Pennsylvania" in "Art News 28", (May 24, 1930), p. 18 (illustrated); "Phillips Mill Art Colony Has Exhibit" in "Baltimore Evening News", [May 1930]; Appraisal of Pictures from the Estate of John F. Folinsbee, June 20, 1972, (Boston: Vose Galleries, 1972) no. 531; Kirsten M. Jensen, "Folinsbee Considered", (Manchester, Vermont: Hudson Hills Press, 2013), p. 60 (illustrated), pp. 172-173, color plate and p. 247 (cat. entry).
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Notes: This work is included in the John F. Folinsbee Catalogue Raisonné online project under the direction of Kristen M. Jensen, PhD. as cat. no. JFF.987.
Kirsten M. Jensen notes, John Folinsbee started his career with a splash. By 1915, at the age of 23, he had already had his first solo exhibition, his f irst traveling exhibition, important gallery representation at Macbeth in New York, and his first award from a jury in a national exhibition. During his lifetime, works sold for five-figure sums to important collectors and museums in Chicago, Cleveland, Houston and Los Angeles and his paintings were exhibited at international venues as representative of American art.
Folinsbee always intended to be an artist, attending children's classes at the Art Student's League of Buffalo at just nine years old. His family moved to Boston where Impressionists Frank Weston Benson and Edmund Tarbell dominated the art scene. In 1906, he had Polio and left the city to recover with his relatives in Plainfield, New Jersey. There, he met Jonas Lie, a strong advocate of plein air painting. Folinsbee spent a few months with Lie before moving to attend the Gunnery school in Washington, Connecticut.
In Connecticut, Folinsbee was encouraged to continue painting landscapes by Frank Vincent Dumond and the writings of Birge Harrison who was then at Woodstock. Motivated by Harrison's writings, Folinsbee f irst arrived at Woodstock in the summer of 1912 and would return in 1913 and 1914 and in the winter between those years. Folinsbee boarded at Birge Harrison's house and was exposed to Harrison as a mentor even though he was no longer actively teaching. Together with Harry LeithRoss the young artists stayed in Woodstock under the tutelage of Harrison in the winter between 1913-1914.
In 1914, Folinsbee married and two years later moved with his wife, Ruth Baldwin, to New Hope, Pennsylvania. Edward Redfield, Daniel Garber, Robert Spencer and William Lathrop were already painting there and Folinsbee would join their ranks as a member of the now coined New Hope School or the Pennsylvania Impressionists.
The present work, dated 1925-26, marks a turning point in the artist's career. Pushing the boundaries of Impressionism, this industrial scene embraces a more modernist approach. Folinsbee scholar Kristen M. Jensen notes, "Gone is the muted palette, the broken brushwork, the interest in tonal harmonies and atmospheric qualities–and in their place are warmer colors; broad, sinuous strokes; and a new light. The forms in these winter scenes are sinewy, as if sculptured from the ground, and the snow is not so much laid on the canvas as poured over it, smoothing the contours of the shapes that lie beneath. These are thoroughly Modernist paintings that convey an understanding of formalist structure without loss of mood or realism. Color is more expressive than it is in his earlier landscapes, the strong emphasis on warmer tones hitting a much more forceful emotional note. These mid-decade works have more substance than their predecessors and subtle and entirely new energy and rhythm shifting and vibrating beneath their heavy blankets of snow."1 Folinsbee's work was regularly included in national exhibitions of American art. He was elected as an associate member of the National Academy in 1919 and a full academician in 1928. Today his work can be viewed in numerous public collections including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the New Britain Museum in Art in Connecticut and the Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey.
1 Kirsten M. Jensen, Folinsbee Considered, (Easthampton, Massachusetts: Hudson Hills Press, 2013), p. 60. -
Condition: in excellent original condition; unlined canvas; recommend cleaning
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