1979.47
Landscape with Arched Trees
Artist
Oscar Florianus Bluemner
(Prenzlau (Brandenburg) Prussia (now Germany), 6/21/1867 - 1/12/1938, South Braintree, Massachusetts)
Title
Landscape with Arched Trees
Creation Date
1918
Century
20th century
Dimensions
4 7/8 in. x 5 7/8 in. (12.38 cm x 14.9 cm)
Object Type
watercolor
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
gouache on white wove paper
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, George Otis Hamlin Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
1979.47
Trained in architectural design in his native Germany and practicing first in Chicago, then in New York, Bluemner embraced the visual arts around 1910 with the encouragement of Alfred Stieglitz (1864--1946), who repeatedly exhibited Bluemner’s paintings and watercolors in his New York galleries. Bluemner’s 1918 composition merges man-made and natural elements, suggesting the possibility of a harmonious balance of the two. An arch of trees frames and accentuates bright red buildings, which in turn correspond with the majestic green mountains in the distance. While the composition is legible as a landscape, it also can be appreciated as abstract arrangement of pure color. Bluemner insisted on the universality of modern art even in the face of rising nationalism and artistic regionalism. In 1932, he responded to the question of “What Is American Art” posed by “The New York Times”: “Ideally, art, pure, is of a sphere and of no country; the first real artists, always and everywhere, have either been importers or immigrants bringing the light with them.”
