Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874-1939)
Frederick Frieseke was among the group of American Impressionist artists who settled in the French village of Giverny, forty miles northwest of Paris, shortly after 1900. This group, which is sometimes referred to as the Giverny Luminists, was attracted to the village by the presence of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet, who had settled there in 1883.
Frieseke is believed to have visited Giverny as early as 1900; in 1906 he and his wife moved into a two-story cottage that adjoined the property of Claude Monet. At Giverny his colleagues included the American painters Guy Rose, Lawton Parker, Edmund Greacen, and Richard E. Miller, with whose work Frieseke’s is often compared. While he maintained an apartment and studio in Paris all his life, Giverny was Frieseke’s summer residence for fourteen years.
In 1920, Frieseke bought a summer home at Le Mesnil-sur-Blangy in Normandy and left the Giverny art colony. He commenced production of a large group of canvases representing frontally posed female figures, most often using his daughter Frances as model. The palette in these paintings is darker than that of his Giverny period and shows more interest in qualities of chiaroscuro as he explored less brilliant light effects. Works painted after 1920 evidence a great deal of control on Frieseke’s part, which, combined with the deeper palette, contribute to a sense of psychological awareness and intensity.
Information courtesy of Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers