Lot Details
Lot 2453
Julian Onderdonk
1882-1922
Low Tide - Long Island Sound
Signed Julian Onderdonk (lr); inscribed as titled and signed Julian Onderdonk on the reverse
Oil on board
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches
In 1901, Julian Onderdonk left his native Texas to study art in New York, initially at the Art Students League and in the summer at the Shinnecock Summer Art School in Southampton, run by William Merritt Chase. The experience was invigorating for him, and he responded enthusiastically to Chase's plein air approach, writing to his family, "I am very glad you want me to go to the summer school for I was crazy to go for I feel I could do better there than in a blamed old cast room. I long to get out in the open air with my palette in one hand and brush in the other and be able to smear paint over the whole canvas."
His financial resources exhausted, Julian's formal artistic education ceased. He remained in New York, supporting himself by painting, and, from 1906, organizing art exhibitions for the Dallas State Fair.
Onderdonk continued to visit the East End of Long Island until he returned to Texas in November 1909. Only eight Long Island subjects have been catalogued. All were painted on-site; the present work is thought to date from 1908-9. Related views, none of which are inscribed with dates, depict the area around Shelter Island and Peconic Bay. Low Tide, Long Island Sound may also represent the same locale. After 1910, the overwhelming majority of Onderdonk's works depict Texas subjects.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonne' of the artist that is being compiled by Lisa and Harry Halff.
We are grateful to Lisa Garcia at Harry Halff Fine Art for her assistance in documenting Julian Onderdonk's work on Long Island.
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