Lot Details
Lot 152
Bruce Crane
American, 1857-1937
Along Egypt Lane, East Hampton
Signed Bruce Crane/NY (lr); signed on the reverse
Oil on canvas
14 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches
Provenance:
Philip Suval Gallery, Southampton and New York
Bland Gallery, New York
Sylvia Tassoni Atkinson
Thence by descent to Arthur L. Tassoni, circa 1980
Private collection, New Jersey, 2004
Bruce Crane first visited East Hampton in the summer of 1880 or 1881 at the behest of the artist Samuel Colman. He was inspired by the architecture, pastures, and beaches of the rural hamlet to create paintings in the spirit of the Barbizon movement, to which he had recently been exposed in France. Charles Teaze Clark has observed that "the bright luminous atmosphere of a summer's day was given in these pictures, not only with truth to nature and a certain poetic sentiment, but with a brilliant sparkling quality of effect." Indeed, by 1883, East Hampton had become recognized as "The American Barbizon," due in part to Crane's East End landscapes, as well as those of George Henry Smillie and Andrew Fisher Bunner, among others.
In addition to Colman, artists working in the region at the time included Thomas Moran, Eastman Johnson, and George and James Smillie. While living there, Crane wrote to his father that "Stimson, Dellenbaugh, Moran, Robbins and Coleman are here . . . I have finished the study of an old house . . . and the artists say that [it] is exceedingly good." In another note he described some of his typical subjects at this time: "I have been working on a 20 x 30 [inch] subject, a row of apple trees, gigantic in size . . . I commence in a few days the study [of] sheep."
In the present work, depicting Hook Mill from Egypt Lane in East Hampton, Crane beautifully describes the brilliant light that drew nineteenth-century American painters to the region. Hook Mill Green, once the sheep fold or the village commons, is visible in the foreground. Although the present work is undated, the Barbizon-inflected manner of execution points to a relatively early date. Later in his career, Crane adopted a looser brushstroke and a tonalist palette.
We thank Terry Wallace for his kind assistance in identifying the site depicted in this painting.
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