Frederick Carl Frieseke 1874 - 1939

By direct descent in the artist's family
Private Collection, New York

New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Frederick Frieseke, 1874-1939, April-May 1966
Savannah, Georgia, Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences; New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries; Raleigh, North Carolina, North Carolina Museum of Art; St. Petersburg, Florida, Museum of Fine Arts; Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia Museum of Art, Frederick Frieseke, 1874-1939, November 1974-June 1975, no. 7
Owosso, Michigan, Shiawassee Arts Council, 1976
San Francisco, California, Maxwell Galleries, A Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of F.C. Frieseke, May-June 1982, no. 20, illustrated in color p. 24
Savannah, Georgia, Telfair Museum of Art; Memphis, Tennessee, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens; San Diego, California, San Diego Museum of Art; Chicago, Illinois, Terra Museum of American Art, Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist, March 2001-February 2002, no. 49, illustrated in color p. 173

In the spring of 1905, Frederick Frieseke was enjoying a period of considerable professional and personal success, having earned medals at Paris salons and exhibitions abroad, the patronage of the Wanamaker family in New York, and the hand of his soon-to-be-wife Sadie, who had finally accepted his long-standing marriage proposal. As such, he was emboldened to move on from the Breton art colony of Le Pouldu where he had been summering since 1901, and after a quick scan of the French countryside, set his sights almost immediately on Giverny.   In 1906 he and his wife moved into a two-story cottage abutting the property once owned by Claude Monet, the artist who had already lured many first-generation American Impressionists to the same area.  The influence of these artists - Theodore Robinson, Willard Metcalf, Theodore Wendel, and John Leslie Breck, among others – still permeated the art colony that Frieseke found at Giverny, where he joined Guy Rose, Lawton Parker, Edmund Graecen and Richard E. Miller who were already in residence.   

The paintings that Frieseke executed during the fourteen summers he spent in Giverny are almost always luminous compositions depicting both interior and outdoor views, with a specific focus on the effects of color and light.  His canvases still retain evidence of his early academy training, but his palette from this point on evidences an unequivocal embrace of Impressionist hues.  In Hill at Giverny, Frieseke uses greens, blues and violets balanced with atmospheric whites in order to capture and reflect the brilliant summer sunlight.  He has also committed to simple, unmolded shapes, allowing the repetitive pattern of the grass on the hill to unite the painting's overall surface.