Beschreibung:

Leon Kroll American, 1884-1974 The Picnic Signed Leon Kroll and dated 1919 (lr); inscribed on an old label on the reverse Property of Leon Kroll / Loaned to Dr. Julius / Lempert for exhibition.... Oil on canvas 36 x 47 7/8 inches Provenance: [With] Barbara Guggenheim, New York Stephen Wald, New York (acquired from the above, 1984) Thence by descent in the family Literature: The Nation, N.N., "Art Put to the Test," vol. 109, no. 2837, Jul. 1-Dec. 31, 1919, p. 642 Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, vols. 10-14, Apr.1920, p. 56, illus. American Art News, vol. 19, no. 20, Feb. 26, 1921, p. 7, mentions The Picnic as one of the works in the exhibition deserving mention. Fredson Bower and Nancy Hale, eds., Leon Kroll A Spoken Memoir, Charlottesville, 1983, illus. pl. 67 Exhibited: New York, Gimpel & Wildenstein, First Annual Exhibition of the American Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, Nov. 3-22, 1919 Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition by the Society of American Painters, Sculptors, Gravers, Mar. 9-Apr. 1, 1920, no. 41 Baltimore, MD, Peabody Galleries, Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art Under the Auspices of the Charcoal Club and the Peabody Institute, 1921 Leon Kroll was in command of his highest artistic powers when he undertook this masterful composition. By this point in his career, his work had already attracted significant attention and he had been granted a one-man exhibition of eighty-five paintings at the National Academy of Design in 1910. Only three years later, his Fauvist color, lush brushwork, and exciting compositions led to an invitation to exhibit at the 1913 Armory Exhibition, where all of his paintings sold. Kroll's ability was recognized early. In the summer of 1906 he won a scholarship to study in Woodstock at the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, and two summers later he was in Europe on a National Academy of Design scholarship to study at the Academie Julian with Jean-Paul Laurens Upon his return to New York, he was introduced to Robert Henri John Sloan and their circle, into which he was welcomed warmly. He traveled with George Bellows to paint on Monhegan Island, Maine in 1913; four years later he joined Bellows and Henri in Santa Fe. Still later, he and a number of his colleagues, including George Bellows, William Glackens, Robert Henri George Luks, Jerome Meyers, Maurice Prendergast, and John Sloan joined the Society of American Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, a group of fifty-one artists (twenty-eight of them Academicians) who opposed the conservative policies of the National Academy of Design, and with them participated in their first exhibition. This show traveled to several venues, including Gimpel & Wildenstein, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Albright Gallery in Buffalo. The reception to the exhibition was uneven, but reviews commended the Ashcan group for their figural work. It is noteworthy that Kroll, who began his career as a student at the National Academy, and who won nearly every award and form of recognition offered by the institution, chose to align himself with the renegades. The paint on The Picnic would have barely have been dry before Kroll submitted it to this traveling exhibition, and he subsequently lent it to another, in Baltimore. It was clearly a work that he deemed important. Some time later, Kroll evidently lent the painting to an exhibition planned by Dr. Julius Lempert, a prominent otolaryngologist and a major collector of his paintings, active in the 1940s and '50s. After this promising flurry of exhibitions, The Picnic disappeared from public view. Listed as unlocated in 1983 when it was reproduced in Kroll's autobiography, Leon Kroll A Spoken Memoir [Fredson Bower and Nancy Hale, eds., Charlottesville, 1983], it surfaced on the art market the following year. The Picnic is an embodiment of Kroll's best pictorial effects. The painting's thrilling color system -- a screen of cool greens and blues against which a range of figures dressed in high-keye
Not examined out of frame. Unlined. No evidence of restoration under UV exam. Minor losses along the extreme edges.