Lot Details
Lot 213
Edward Cucuel
German/American, 1875-1954
Two Girls in White Beside a Lake in Autumn
Signed Cucuel (lr)
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches (80 x 80 cm)
Provenance:
Private collection, Germany
Guarisco Gallery, Washington D.C.
Private collection, Washington, D.C.
Born in San Francisco, Edward Cucuel began his studies at the local academy of the arts when he was 14, and soon after began to work as an illustrator for the San Francisco Examiner. At 17 he was sent to Paris, where he enrolled at the Academie Julien and the Academie des Beaux Arts, studying with Jean-Leon Gerome. In 1896 he worked briefly in New York before returning to Europe for more study and travel. In 1907 he moved to Munich, where he was to live and exhibit for many years. In 1912 he began to show his works in Paris as well.
Cucuel married Clara Lotte von Marcard in 1913 and summered with his wife and family near Munich in a villa on Lake Ammersee in Holzhausen. "Inspired by the serenity of the area, he often illustrated the view of the lake from his home, capturing the glistening lights upon the water and the sailboats gliding past. It was here that Cucuel executed the majority of his plein-air paintings of bathers." [Cucuel. Washington, D.C.: Guarisco Gallery, 1996, p. 12]
In color and subject matter, Cucuel's style is close to that of the French Impressionists, although his brushwork tends to be broader than theirs. His favorite subject was women, shown in bright interiors or on sunny outdoor settings, often wearing white frocks dappled with velvety shadows. A classic example of his mature treatment, Two Girls in White beside a Lake in Autumn may well have been painted at Lake Ammersee.
At the beginning of World War II Cucuel returned to the United States, settling in Pasadena, California until his death in 1954.
C Estate of a Washington, D.C. Philanthropist
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