Footnotes

Provenance
The artist.
Erhard Weyhe, Weyhe Gallery, New York, (probably) acquired from the above.
Private collection, New York.
Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, acquired from the above, 2002.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2005.

Flowers is a marvelous example of the more dynamic and fluid energy of Alfred Maurer's work from the interwar period and is a direct reflection of the influence of the work of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) on Maurer's style. Cézanne's work was more widely accessible by the 1920s with more American galleries and museums sponsoring exhibitions, releasing publications on the artist, and making important acquisitions of his work. To many of the artists working in the interwar period including Maurer, Cézanne's work offered a link between the traditional academic values and modern forms of expression. Cézanne's conviction of space and the arrangement of his plastic relations that anchor his compositions inspired Maurer.

In Flowers, Maurer adopted Cézanne's method of color construction by modeling form through the use color and he rejects traditional space by employing simultaneous perspectives and collapsing the foreground and background. Maurer has chosen a bright and richly colored palette applied with a frenzied energy that seems to burst from the centrally placed floral arrangement. This immense energy exhibited in Maurer's florals arguably serves to reflect the generative forces of nature and the lively pace of the 1920s. Stacy B. Epstein, the foremost scholar on Alfred Maurer, goes further to argue that "though set in interiors, these works are incontestably tied to nature - truly of the American earth and soil. In a period marked by mass production and a drive toward technology, they offer a return to the primitive essence of nature, which was envisioned by Maurer as ecstatic and flourishing." (S.B. Epstein, Alfred Maurer: At the Vanguard of Modernism, Andover, Massachusetts, 2015, p. 169) Maurer's floral works were arguably his most visually expressive from this period in his career and reside in the ranks of the floral depictions by American modernists working alongside him in the 1920s, such as Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Charles Demuth (1883-1935), and Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986). The stylistic qualities of these works dazzled viewers and were received enthusiastically.