John Elwood Bundy 1853-1933
Winter on the Whitewater (1914)
Oil on Canvas
18 x 22 inches
Signed Lower Left
--- original hand-carved frame re-leafed in 22K gold This painting was featured in our weekly email on 9/13/13 along with the following gallery comments: Winter on the Whitewater, painted in 1914, depicts one of Bundy’s favorite subjects, the Whitewater River running through Eastern Indiana. Downstream on the same river, the subject was famously portayed by T.C. Steel and J. Ottis Adams from various perspectives in Brookville, IN. Contrasting with the more literal interpretation of interior beech forests, this very impressionistic winter piece shows Bundy painting at the height of his power, rendering his beloved Whitewater Valley in the full splendor of the season. A very similar, larger painting, also created in 1914 and depicting the same scene and season is part of the Indiana University art collection and is currently displayed behind the registration desk at the IU Memorial Union (See end of this email to view). The IU painting is referenced in William Gerdts’ monograph on the artist: Although autumn may have been his favorite season of all, many of Bundy's paintings are truly winter scenes, in which he concentrated on streams flowing between snowy banks, such as his 1903 Winter Afternoon (private collection) and his Winter on the Whitewater and Wane of Winter, both of 1914. In fact, Bundy's earliest contributions to the shows of the Richmond Art Association were pictures of "winter time." Bundy surely would have enjoyed, with John Burroughs, "the warmth that lurks in the frost" and might have agreed with him that "Winter has its own beauty, but let us admit it is not the beauty of life, of the leaf and the petal, but the beauty of the crystal or the gem." (William H. Gerdts, “A Walk in the Woods: The Art of John Elwood Bundy” (1853-1933); Quoting from John Burroughs, "The Tonic of Winter," Country Life in America 19 (December Mid-Month, 1910)) A very important work by one of the most acclaimed painters in the history of Indiana art. –Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art
SOLD
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