Frederick Carl Frieseke

Magazine Antiques, April, 2001 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

In the pantheon of American impressionists, only a few have escaped being the subject of at least one large-scale exhibition. Such was the case with Frederick Carl Frieseke, who is only now the subject of a traveling show that recently opened at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, where it is on view until June 3.

The Telfair Museum began purchasing works by Frieseke in 1910 and today has four of his canvases. The current exhibition, which is entitled Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, includes more than eighty oils and watercolors that span his long career. The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was a turning point in Frieseke's life, for it was after he visited the fair at the age of nineteen that he decided to become an artist. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later at the Art Students League in New York City From there, like so many of his contemporaries, he traveled to Paris, where, in 1897, he enrolled at the Academie Julian and at the Academie Carmen, studying briefly at the latter with James McNeill Whistler. In 1905 he married Sarah O'Bryan, and the following year the couple summered at the artist's enclave in the village of Giverny (also the home of Claude Monet), becoming in effect a part of the third contingent of American painters to be drawn to this bucolic setting outside Paris. Brilliant colors mark the work of this period in Frieseke's career, and his compositions consist primarily of one or two female figures in a garden setting. However, it was the effect of raking sunlight that consistently preoccupied Fr ieseke during his Giverny years, for as he wrote, "If you are looking at a mass of flowers in the sunlight out of doors you see a sparkle of spots of different colors; then paint them in that way." This approach is also evident in the sensual nudes he painted in landscape settings. The highly keyed colors applied in dense brushstrokes are characteristic of his work in this period and stylistically ally him more with the Nabis than the impressionists.

Frieseke was one of a very few artists who rode out World War I in Giverny, but in 1920 he and his family settled in Normandy. (He died there in 1939.) This period marked a shift in his style as he reverted to a more tonal palette and embraced a more realistic approach to his subject matter.

The guest curator of the exhibition is the artist's grandson, Nicholas Kilmer, who has also contributed an essay to the accompanying catalogue. The publication also includes essays by H. Barbara Weinberg, Virginia Mecklenburg, and David Sellin.