Robert Frederick Blum

Robert Frederick Blum (1857-1903) A Bright Day in Venice signed 'Robt. Blum' and inscribed with title (on the reverse) oil on canvas 11 x 21½ in. (27.9 x 54.6 cm.) The artist. Otto H. Bacher, acquired from the above. By descent to the present owner. The present work depicts the Venetian lagoon, dotted with black gondolas, utilizing a high horizon line and subtle, harmonious gradations of tone to capture the sense of ease and serenity that permeates the city. Dr. William H. Gerdts notes, "Probably the ultimate pictorial and literary trope for Venice in the nineteenth century, even more so with the arrival of large steamships, was the image of the gondola, often carrying passengers, artists and others...Robert Blum was not immune to the seductiveness of the gondola image." ("The International Milieu," Sargent's Venice, exhibition catalogue, New Haven, Connecticut, 2006, p. 174)

Robert Frederick Blum (1857-1903) Venetian Gondoliers signed 'Blum' with artist's device (lower right) oil on canvas 18¼ x 28½ in. (46.4 x 72.4 cm.) Painted circa 1880-89. Private collection, Denver, Colorado, by 1995. By descent to the present owner. L. Merrill, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, exhibition catalogue, New Haven, Connecticut, 2003, pp. 32, 144-45, no. 19, illustrated. Atlanta, Georgia, High Museum of Art, and elsewhere, After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, November 22, 2003- February 8, 2004, no. 19. Venetian Gondoliers is a serene yet aesthetically rigorous depiction of the milky green waters of the Venetian lagoon, dotted with black gondolas. Dr. William H. Gerdts notes, "Probably the ultimate pictorial and literary trope for Venice in the nineteenth century, even more so with the arrival of large steamships, was the image of the gondola, often carrying passengers, artists and others...Robert Blum was not immune to the seductiveness of the gondola image." ("The International Milieu," Sargent's Venice, exhibition catalogue, New Haven, Connecticut, 2006, p. 174) On April 14th, 1880, Blum, along with fellow artist Alexander Drake, left New York aboard the ship Arizona headed for London. Blum traveled from London to Paris, Rome and Pisa before arriving in Venice on May 28th. While personal letters home to his family are characterized by Blum's rather blasé and uninterested tone regarding most of the European capitals he visited, in Venice, everything changed. Blum formed an abiding love for and fascination with Venice's unique patina and engaging contradictions which informed his depictions of the mysterious floating city from his initial visit in 1880 until his last trip in 1889. Blum's initial decision to travel to Venice was not surprising, as the water-bound city was filled with American avant-garde painters; the romantic and mysterious charms of the city made it a magnet for many artists and writers. Bruce Weber writes of Blum's initial Venetian visit, "Early in his stay, Blum re-established his association with Frank Duveneck, and became friendly with the members of Duveneck's large class of American students." (Robert Blum (1857-1903) and His Milieu, vol. I, Ph.D dissertation, City University of New York, 1985, p. 104). Blum rented a room at the Casa Yankowitz, where many of the "Duveneck Boys" took rooms. The palazzo was located at 2140 Campo San Biaggio, which "jutted out squarely at the lower end of the Riva degli Schiavoni [with] all of Venice in front of it," (J. Pennell, as quoted in Robert Blum (1857-1903) and His Milieu, vol. I, p. 105) James McNeill Whistler arrived that summer and he too took a room at the Casa Yankowitz. Blum was already well familiar with Whistler's work prior to the trip and the arrival of the artist was momentous in Blum's career. Whistler was in Venice to create etchings for a commission from the Fine Arts Society and revive his career. Whistler sketched views of the canal from every room of the palazzo and the view from Blum's room was a particular favorite. Blum wrote to his family, "Whistler is here and I know him well, and he is very busy making an etching from my window and he seems very much interested in me and though I am sometimes dissatisfied with my work he always encourages me." (After Whistler, p. 40) This encounter with Whistler would have a profound immediate and lasting impact on Blum's style. Going and Coming (1880, location unknown), which was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1881 and closely relates to the present work, was described by a reviewer for The Nation: "Mr. Blum's blue picture is the most attractive thing in the Exhibition, to our mind...Black gondolas are 'going and coming' on the unruffled surfaces of the Adriatic, beneath a sky whose blue depths of perfectly cloudless space are reflected in the water below, at the far horizon appears the low and faint mirage of Venice, the roseate yellow of which is, excepting some costumery in a gondola, the only color that relieves the black and blue effect of the picture. The whole scheme is strongly individual, and executed with a refined delicacy of workmanship extremely agreeable to meet with here." (as quoted in Robert Blum (1857-1903) and His Milieu, vol. I, p. 124) The qualities described in the above painting are the same as those found in Venetian Gondoliers and each work, with its high horizon lines and subtle, harmonious gradations of tone reflects Blum's unique assimilation of Whistler's aesthetic. CAPTIONS: James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: The Solent, 1866. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK.

Robert Frederick Blum (1857-1903) Circus Ring at Night signed 'Blum' (lower right) oil on canvas 14¼ x 18¾ in. (36.2 x 47.6 cm.) Victor Spark, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Horowitz, New York. The Regis Collection, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1980. [With]Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York. Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1987. R.J. Boyle, A Retrospective Exhibition: Robert F. Blum, 1857-1903, exhibition catalogue, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1966, p. 27, no. 20, fig. 6, illustrated. Davis & Long Company, American Painting, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1976, n.p., no. 4, illustrated. Cincinnati, Ohio, The Cincinnati Art Museum, A Retrospective Exhibition of Robert F. Blum 1857-1903, April 1-May 7, 1966, no. 20. New York, Davis and Long Company, American Painting, 1976, no. 4. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Milwaukee Art Museum, Center Ring: The Artist, 1981, no. 14.

Lot Description Robert Frederick Blum (1857-1903) The Picture Book oil on panel 6¾ x 10½ in. (17.1 x 26.7 cm.) Painted circa 1890. Provenance George Ablah Collection, Kansas. [With]Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York. Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1985. Pre-Lot Text Property from The Westervelt Company, formerly The Gulf StatesPaper Corporation Literature F.D. Hill, "The Warner Collection of Gulf States PaperCorporation," Antiques Magazine, November 1986, p. 1043, pl. xii,illustrated. D.P. Curry, et al., American Dreams: Paintings and Decorative Artsfrom the Warner Collection, exhibition catalogue, Richmond,Virginia, 1997, pp. 64-65, illustrated. T. Armstrong, ed., An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection ofAmerican Fine and Decorative Arts, Gulf States Paper Corporation,Tuscaloosa, Alabama, New York, 2001, pp. 132-33,illustrated. Exhibited Richmond, Virginia, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, AmericanDreams: Paintings and Decorative Arts from the Warner Collection,September 20, 1997-January 25, 1998. View Lot Notes › "Taste for the art of the Far East arrived in the United Statesin the wake of Commodore Matthew Perry's 1850s visit to Japan andthe published reports of his journeys. Hokusai prints begancirculating in exhibitions in the 1860s, the decade in which theJapanese embassy opened in New York...Robert Blum visited theJapanese Pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in1876, and the interest in Japanese art kindled there eventuallyresulted in a two-and-a-half-year stay in Japan starting in 1889.Scribner's commissioned Blum to create pastels and drawings forJaponica by Sir Edwin Arnold, which appeared in serialized form inthe magazine. His small oil painting The Picture Book, circa 1890,created during his Japanese sojourn, shows a kimono-clad Japanesegirl lying down on the floor with head in hands, absorbed incontemplation of an illustrated book. In much of the same way,Japanese prints held the rapt attention of such American artists asBlum, John La Farge, and Whistler." (E.M. Foshay, "The CosmopolitanPerspective" in An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection ofAmerican Fine and Decorative Arts, Gulf States Paper Corporation,Tuscaloosa, Alabama , New York, 2001, p. 132)

LOT 110 PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF MRS. CHARLES SCRIBNER,JR. ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM 1857 - 1903 THE NO DANCE 7,000—9,000 USD measurements measurements sight: 13 1/4 by 12 in. alternate measurements 33.7 by 30.5 cm. Description stamped with the artist's signature stamp, l.l. watercolor on board Executed circa 1890-1891. PROVENANCE Scribner's Magazine (commissioned directly from theartist)By descent in the family to the present owner LITERATURE AND REFERENCES Sir Edwin Arnold, "Japonica: Fourth Paper - Japanese Ways andThoughts," Scribner's Magazine, vol. IX, 1891, illustrated p.332 CATALOGUE NOTE Robert Blum began his academic training at the McMicken Schoolof Design and the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati, where inthe fall of 1874, he attended a special night class taught by FrankDuveneck. Duveneck's small coterie of young students were known asthe 'Duveneck Boys' and included J.H. Twachtman. In 1876, Blumtraveled to Philadelphia to study at the Pennsylvania Academy ofthe Fine Arts. While there, he viewed the Centennial Exposition,and Blum became particularly interested in works by Europeanartists Giovanni Boldini and Mario Fortuny. Through Duveneck, Blumalso met William Merritt Chase and James McNeill Whistler, whointroduced Blum to the pastel medium and shared his fascinationwith japonisme . Blum established his professional reputationin New York in the 1880s through exhibitions at the Society ofAmerican Artists and the National Academy of Design, where he was amember. In May 1890, Blum was commissioned by Scribner's Magazine to illustrate a series of articles on Japan. The oils, watercolors,and drawings made during his two year sojourn illustrated fourdifferent articles in Scribner's published between 1891 and1892. Since trade with Japan had only been opened by CommodorePerry thirty years earlier and was interrupted during the 1860s bycivil wars in both countries, Japanese culture was still relativelynew to Americans. Blum therefore documented as much of the countryas he could, from its costumes and craftspeople to its customs anddances. One of his masterpieces from this period, The Ameya (circa 1893, Metropolitan Museum of Art), depicts a candymaker on a local village street. The present work depicts the No (or Noh) dance, a Japanese artform where a traditional canon of stories was performed through acombination of dance, theatre, and poetry. Blum's watercoloraccurately depicts many aspects of the No dance, including the fourmain figures of the dance. The central figure, here in a redcostume, is the main actor. This shite , who is often themost extravagantly dressed, wears a mask and carries a fan. Thewaki, the counterpart to the shite , sits facing theaction at the front of the stage. Four musicians, known as thehayashi-kata , sit at the back of the stage and play thestick drum, hip drum, shoulder drum and transverse flute dressed ina traditional Japanese kimono with a kami-shimo , acombination of a shirt-like garment and a waist-coat withexaggerated shoulders. The two stage hands, or koken ,observe from the background dressed in virtually unadorned blackgarments. The stage setting is drawn from the shinto shrines, wherethe dance was originally performed, represented by the four pillarsof the stage and a lone pine tree in the background. Of the No dance, Sir Edwin Arnold wrote in his Scribner'sMagazine essay "the religious, historical, and idyllic dancesof the No , which are entirely classical, traditional, andcomplicated by allusion, [are] very difficult to understand withouta key." Of the performance that Arnold observed he stated: "It issimply a dance of a love-lorn girl in company with a rural swain,but full of such grace, such artistic spirit, such measure marriageof foot and heart, that a Parisian or Viennese pas-seul became a clumsy athleticism matched with it" ("Japonica: FourthPaper - Japanese Ways and Thoughts," vol. IX, 1891, p. 337).