Dennis Miller Bunker

Edmund C. Tarbell (gift from the artist)
Mary Tarbell Schaffer (his daughter), New Castle, New Hampshire
Giovanni Castano, Boston, Massachusetts (acquired from the above)
Ira Spanierman, New York
Rita and Daniel Fraad, New York, 1964 (acquired from the above; sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 1, 2004, lot 4)
Michael Altman Fine Art, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, circa 2013

New Britain, Connecticut, The New Britain Museum of American Art; New York, Davis & Long Company, Dennis Miller Bunker Rediscovered, April-June 1978, no. 14
Fort Worth, Texas, Amon Carter Museum, American Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings from the Collection of Rita and Daniel Fraad, May-July 1985, no. 16, pp. 36-37, illustrated
Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts; Denver, Colorado, Denver Art Museum, Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist, 1995, no. 35, pp. 17, 62, 111, 174, 182, illustrated p. 153

The canvas is lined and there is frame abrasion at edges. There is very fine surface cracking near lower right edge. Under UV: there is inpainting to frame abrasion at edges, a spot at center bottom edge and a few pindots in the sky.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In The Station, Dennis Miller Bunker depicts the view from his studio at 145 Dartmouth Street in Boston. According to the scholar Erica E. Hirshler, "In The Station, Bunker looked along the railroad tracks toward the East; the step-gabled silhouetter of the Y.M.C.A. at Berkeley and Boylston streets, the steeple of the Arlington Street Church, and the dome of the State House appear on the horizon.  …Bunker allowed the tracks, railroad cars, and train sheds to dominate the composition.  The natural world is limited to the gray sky, linked by a plume of steam to the white snow, which Bunker used as flickering highlight to define architectural details.  It is a startlingly modern painting, more akin to the grimy visions of industrial landscapes created in the early twentieth century than it is to the common and persistent nineteenth-century American vision of the railroad as a harbinger of progress in the wilderness.  With its free handling of paint and city subject matter, The Station recalls Monet's steaming locomotives at the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris, exhibited at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877.  It is unlikely that Bunker saw that series, but his new familiarity with Impressionism must have contributed to the confident ease with which he painted his only known urban view" (Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994, p. 62).