William Zorach

Tessim Zorach, the artist's son
Zabriskie Gallery, New York
Sale:  Sotheby's New York, December 5, 1991, lot 111
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

New York, Brooklyn Museum, William Zorach:  Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors and Drawings, 1911-1922, November 1968 - January, 1969, no. 38

Canvas is lined. SURFACE: in good condition UNDER ULTRA VIOLET: scattered dot/dashes adn spots of inpainting--no apparent tears
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The year 1920 was a pivotal one for William Zorach.  He and his wife, Marguerite traveled cross-country to California.  Donelson F. Hoopes writes, "Zorach, who always found nourishment for his art in the presence of nature, encountered on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada his most powerful inspiration.  The Yosemite Valley offered inexhaustible possibilities for him and the summer of 1920 marks Zorach's most prolific period of work as a painter.  His reports are charged with an ecstatic fervor:  The Valley is simply marvelous - barring the tourists...I've been doing so good hiking, climbing mountains.  I'm sure I could climb the Woolworth Building...without an effort.  I walk 40 miles over mountains and don't think anything of it anymore....The motif of the waterfall was treated in a variety of ways as Zorach endlessly explored the rhythms of line found in the twisting courses of high, unnamed mountain brooks and the precipitous cascade of Yosemite Falls itself....They returned to New York in October and Zorach, working from hundreds of sketches and finished watercolors, proceeded to create a series of oil paintings"  (Donnelson F. Hoopes, William Zorach:  Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings Exhibition Catalogue, 1911-1922, New York, 1968, pp. 13-14).