Julian Alden Weir

M. Knoedler & Co., New York
Milch Gallery, New York, 1919
Horatio Seymour Rubens, New York, by 1922
Sidney Levyne
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Meredith Long and Company, Houston, Texas
Private Southwestern Collection (sold: Christie's, New York, May 29, 1987, lot 202)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

New York, Century Club, spring 1913
New York, Montross Gallery, Ten American Painters: 17th Annual Exhibition, March-April 1914, no. 22
Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Musuem, Annual Exhibition, 1915, no. 2
(possibly) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 11th Annual Exhibition, February-March 1916, no. 345 (as A Bit of Bahama: Nassau)
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, J. Alden Weir Memorial Exhibition, 1924, no. 54, illustrated, n.p.
Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn Museum, Leaders of American Impressionism: Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John H. Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, 1937, no. 88
New York, Babcock Gallery, J. Alden Weir, 1942, no. 2
New York, Jordan-Volpe Gallery, Ten American Painters, May-June 1991, pp. 222-23, illustrated
Vero Beach, Florida, Vero Beach Museum of Art, Masters of Light: Selections of American Impressionism from the Manoogian Collection, January-April 2006, illustrated
Vero Beach, Florida, Vero Beach Museum of Art, The American Spirit: Selections from the Manoogian Collection, October 2016-January 2017

Royal Cortissoz, "Good Pictures by the Ten," New York Tribune, March 20, 1914, p. 9
"Art Notes: Seventeenth Annual Exhibition of the Ten," New York Evening Post, March 21, 1914, p. 9
John Edgar Chamberlin, "The 'Ten Americans'," New York Evening Mail, March 21, 1914, p. 8
"Good Paintings in Annual Show by Seven Members of 'The Ten'," New York Herald, March 21, 1914, p. 11
J. B. Millet, ed., Julian Alden Weir: An Appreciation of His Life and Works, New York, 1921, p. 43
Julian Alden Weir: An Appreciation of His Life and Works, New York, 1922, p. 136
Dorothy Weir Young, The Life and Letters of J. Alden Weir, New Haven, Connecticut, 1960, p. 240
William H. Gerdts, Ten American Painters, New York, 1990, pp. 61, 63, 186
Deborah S. Gardner and Christine G. McKay, An Artist’s Retreat: J. Alden Weir’s Farm in Connecticut, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2009, pp. 114, 215, 219

Painted in the spring of 1913, Nassau-Bahamas is one of the strongest examples of Julian Alden Weir’s work from the Caribbean. Beginning in 1902, Weir and his wife Ella made at least six trips to the Bahamas. They often spent the spring months visiting Ella’s sister Cora Davis Rutherfurd and her husband Henry Davis at their home, Edgerston-by-the-Sea, in Nassau. Writing to his close friend Childe Hassam, Weir described his fondness for the islands: “This is the place that you would enjoy. The light & color are wonderful” (as quoted in Deborah S. Gardner and Christine G. McKay, An Artist’s Retreat: J. Alden Weir’s Farm in Connecticut, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2009, p. 114). It was an ideal retreat for the artist who split his time between painting and deep-sea fishing. Like fellow American artists Winslow Homer and Albert Bierstadt, Weir’s scenes from the Bahamas demonstrate a keen interest in the islands’ maritime culture and local architecture.

In a letter written during March 1913, the same spring in which he completed Nassau-Bahamas, Weir described the challenge of capturing the islands’ distinct light and color: “Here we are at the Tropics. Thermometer about 80 with a wonderful sense of light. I have a half dozen canvases begun but the overwhelming sense of light all but paralyzes me. All this light is evidence of more color. I never worked with more interest to try and realize this problem. Many of the men whose work I have not been keen about have undoubtedly found that the great power in the tropical country is color and that was the theme that interested them. The color of the water here which has a bed of coral has more splendid and brilliant color than I have ever dreamed of, but to harness it in its just relation is indeed an interesting problem” (as quoted in Dorothy Weir Young, The Life and Letters of J. Alden Weir, New Haven, Connecticut, 1960, p. 246).