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PROPERTY FROM A NEW YORK COLLECTION
Lot 34W,▲
Robert Reid(1862-1929)Opal 72 x 36in
18 May 2016, 14:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$50,000 inc. premium
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Robert Reid (1862-1929)
Opal
signed 'Robert Reid' (lower left)
oil on canvas
72 x 36in
Painted circa 1895.
signed 'Robert Reid' (lower left)
oil on canvas
72 x 36in
Painted circa 1895.
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist.
Arthur Perkins, New York, acquired from the above.
The Honorable John A. Wakefield, Omaha, Nebraska, 1898.
Omaha Public Library, Omaha, Nebraska, gift of the above, 1899.
Brown Corbin Fine Arts, Milton, Massachusetts, 1996.
Adelson Galleries, New York, 1997.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1999.
Exhibited
New York, Society of American Artists, 1897.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Sixty-Seventh Annual Exhibition, January 10-February 22, 1898, no. 375.
New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, Robert Reid, April 1898.
Omaha, Nebraska, Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, June 1-November 1, 1898, no. 455.
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Paintings by the Ten American Painters, March 15-27, 1915, no. 25.
New York, Spanierman Gallery, Ten American Painters, May 8-June 9, 1990, p. 183, no. 25, illustrated.
New York, Adelson Galleries, American Impressionist Selections, July-September, 1997.
Literature
"The Week in the Art World," The New York Times, April 23, 1898, p. 270.
The Critic, vol. 29, 1898, n.p.
Omaha World Herald, December 18, 1898, p. 2.
F.N. Levy, ed., American Art Annual, 1898, London, 1899, p. 321, 327, no. 455.
"Omaha's Best Art Obscured," Omaha World Herald, March 21, 1937, p. 12, illustrated.
W.H. Gerdts, American Impressionism, New York, 1984, p. 183.
Robert Reid's Opal is one of his largest, finest and most distinguished works. Its extensive and important early exhibition history only supports this claim, as does the significant recognition the work received from critics. In 1898, The New York Times noted that Reid was seen as "a strong and facile draughtsman [with a] fine and refined color scheme...[and] Opal [is] a remarkably strong life-size nude study." The same year, The Critic discusses Opal at length and sees it as "happily named...delicate and harmonious to an unusual degree." In more recent literature, Dr. William Gerdts wrote in 1984, in his book American Impressionism, that Opal is a variant of Reid's "principal theme" and likened it to the work of Albert Bernard.
The subject of this painting, referring both to the iridescent, variably colored and seemingly magical stone for which it is titled, and to the venerable and vulnerable woman rendered, was also explored by other artists of the era including Edmund Tarbell and Childe Hassam. Reid's Opal is, however, the most important known exploration of the theme. Its large, almost life-size scale, dazzling chromatic presence, technical fluency and noble sentiment all contribute to its understanding as a definitive Reid masterpiece.
An inscription on the original stretcher bar (now affixed to a modern stretcher) ascribes the early provenance of the work as follows: 'Robert Reid / Opal / Presented to / Arthur Perkins 141 E 23rd Street ASA.' The present work was subsequently owned by the Honorable John A. Wakefield who was the Secretary to the Board of Directors of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1898. He later gifted the painting to the Omaha Public Library where it remained for ninety-seven years.