Lot Details
Lot 163
Jean MacLane American, 1878-1964 Summer Night Concert: Intermission (Symphony Night: Intermission), 1934
American, 1878-1964
Summer Night Concert: Intermission (Symphony Night: Intermission), 1934
Signed Jean MacLane and dated 1934 (lr); signed Jean Myrtle MacLane, N.A. and dated 1934 on the reverse
Oil on board
22 5/8 x 23 inches
Provenance:
Plaza Art Galleries, Inc.
John James Bowden, Bayside, New York, 1942
Thence by descent to the present owner
Exhibited:
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Stockbridge Art Exhibition (as Symphony Night: Intermission)
Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 130th Annual Exhibition, Jan. 27-Mar. 3, 1935, no. 206
Although in her lifetime Jean MacLane was most recognized for her commissioned portraits, her "decorative paintings," as they were termed when exhibited, are today considered most desirable. Born in Chicago, she first studied at the Art Institute, and then later with Frank Duveneck in Cincinnati and William Merritt Chase in New York. Married in 1905 to the Danish-born portraitist, John C. Johansen, she and her husband helped establish the National Foundation of Portrait Painters in 1912, a watershed year for MacLane. The same year she was commissioned to paint the likeness of Queen Elizabeth of Belgium as part of a series depicting the Allied Leaders of World War I, and was also elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design. She became a full Academician in 1926. She and her husband maintained adjoining studios in New York, along with studios in their summer home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where MacLane exhibited the present work in an exhibition of the Stockbridge Art Association.
Devoted to her family, MacLane configured her professional commitments around the needs of her four children, who often posed for their mother's compositions. Nearly square in format like the present work, these works characteristically depict figural groups, viewed at close range, more often than not engaged in recreational activities. Whether sunbathing at the beach, playing tennis, or strolling out-of-doors, the groupings are typically bathed in bright sunlight that boldly defines forms and animates the compositions.
In 1984, Frederick Platt wrote of the artist's love of decorative figural compositions, "By necessity her portraits could not wander too far afield, yet her passion to arrange figures into decorative compositions reached dizzying heights in her personal painting. Amid geometrical abstractions of rocks and hills, human forms ceased to strike purposeful poses. From her early genre work she had progressed to pure beauty." [Frederick Platt, Jean MacLane. Charlottesville, Virginia, Balogh Gallery, 1984, p. 5]
Summer Night Concert: Intermission (Symphony Night: Intermission), a nocturne, appears to be unique in the artist's oeuvre. A group of concert-goers lounges beneath a night sky dappled with stars. An undefined light source boldly delineates figures that stand out dramatically against the dark hills in the distance. Broadly described by MacLane with bold strokes of paint in a manner more akin to the Ashcan school than to American Impressionism, the stylish crowd stands in casual groups, chatting and smoking, capturing the pleasures of a summer's night.
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