Alice Schille Watercolor Painting "White Bonnet"
Item Details
Alice Schille (Ohio/New Mexico; 1869 – 1955)
White Bonnet
Watercolor painting on paper
Signed to lower right
A watercolor painting on paper titled White Bonnet by listed artist Alice Schille (Ohio/New Mexico; 1869 – 1955). This painting depicts a woman holding a young girl, wearing a white bonnet, on her lap. They are seated in the foreground of a mountainous landscape with a black cat perched in a bare tree branch, overlooking the scene. Rich color surrounds the central figures that are rendered in sharp black and white contrast, creating a circular sense of movement around the composition. This work is signed to the lower right. It is presented behind a beige mat with a brown liner, under glass, in a gold-tone wood frame.
Provenance
Private collection, Cincinnati, OH
Purchased from Berner’s Auction Gallery, Donnelsville, Ohio, 2010
Alice Schille was born to a wealthy family in Columbus, Ohio in 1869. She knew from a young age that she wanted to be an artist, and diligently pursued her artistic career with support from her family. She attended the Columbus Art School from 1891 -1893, returning as a member of the faculty from 1902 until 1948. She moved to New York to study at the Arts Students League from 1897 -1897, and remained in the city to study under notable painters William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox at the New York School of Art.
Schille first traveled to Europe in 1902, and had five paintings accepted at the Society Nationale des Beux Arts in Paris in 1904, a significant accomplishment early in her career. Schille continued to travel extensively throughout her career, including visits to New Mexico, France, Guatemala, Mexico, North Africa and Turkey. Her painting style was influenced by her travels as well as the contemporary painters of her time, including Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Henri Matisse.
Known for her unsentimental portrayals of ordinary life, Schille painted in both the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist style, typically depicting women, children, markets and landscapes with and without figures. She is considered one of the preeminent American watercolorists and her work resides in the permanent collections of many distinguished institutions, including the Columbus Museum of Art, the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Art Club of Philadelphia, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Ohio State University, the Colby College Art Museum, the El Paso Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. In 1987 her work was included in the inaugural exhibition of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.
Dimensions
- measures frame. Visible image measures 19.0" W x 24.0" H.
Item #
18CIN517-037
