Edward Cucuel

Private Collection, Germany

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work is in excellent condition. The canvas is unlined and the paint layer is stable, clean and undamaged. The only retouches are a few tiny spots in the sky in the upper left. The work should be hung as is.
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Although born in America, Edward Cucuel spent much of his career working in Germany (he moved to Berlin in 1899, where he met his wife, artist Clara Lotte von Marcard) and from 1918 he and his family summered at their house on the shores of Lake Starnberg in Bavaria, the setting of the present work.  The property, which had a large overgrown garden, fronted the lake with its own private jetty, on which the artist often had his models pose.  The garden and the lake beyond provided the backdrop to Cucuel’s carefree summer scenes of beautiful, fashionably dressed young women boating, bathing and picnicking en plein air.  Cucuel was greatly inspired by the Impressionists, in particular the Tyrolian artist Leo Putz (1869-1940), with whom he spent summers from 1909 painting at Putz’s Hartmannsdorf Castle. 

A comparable work of the same title is illustrated in Fritz von Ostini, Der Maler Edward Cucuel, Zurich, 1924, p. 74.