|
About Carl W. Peters
Carl William Peters (1897-1980) was one of America’s successful and intriguing artists who slipped through the cracks of American art history. A master landscapist and genre painter within the realist tradition, represented in his time by the American Scene and regionalist movements, Peters also executed an outstanding series of murals under government sponsorship during the Depression era. His drawings that were executed on the front lines in war-torn France in 1917-18 rival those of John Singer Sargent. For his striking urban and rural snow scenes, Peters was the winner of three Hallgarten Prizes at the National Academy of Design. He also won numerous other impressive prizes throughout his career, including the first ever Fairchild Award in Rochester (1924). He exhibited his works regularly at the National Academy, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, the Fort Worth Museum, the Rockport Art Association, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, Peters was the victim of a short-sighted critical climate, which ruled the New York art world. At the peak of his career in the Great Depression, this all embracing aesthetic dictatorship deemed that representational art was no longer worthy of consideration, since in effect, the advent of the second wave of European modernism made all realist-based art invalid.
Peters was the product of a conservative but active art community, descended from the Hudson River School and tonalist landscape painting, the many aspects of the Genteel Tradition, including a strong foundation of Christianity, and the established and unchallenged literary masters, such as Longfellow, and Emerson. By the time Peters was born, the style of landscape painting in Rochester was a pleasantly eclectic combination of the sublime, the picturesque, tonalism, and naturalism, mostly represented by the "American Barbizon" painters, and a hint of impressionism, which had already been widely accepted both in Paris and in New York. In 1909, the year of Marinetti’s "Futurist Manifesto," the provincial outpost of Rochester was still welcoming lecturers who extolled the virtues of Ruskin’s and Emerson’s moralistic basis for art. Peters, however, grew up during the Progressive Era, and various elements of the avant-garde did exert an influence on his art, to greater and lesser degrees. |
Paintings by Carl W. Peters
| Lanesville |
| oil on canvas: 25 x 30 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Afternoon Walk at Low Tide |
| oil on canvas: 16 x 20 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| The Old Boat |
| oil on canvas: 20 x 24 inches |
| estate stamp: reverse |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Waiting at the Dock |
| oil on canvas: 20 x 24 inches |
| estate stamp: reverse |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Stream in Winter |
| oil on canvas: 36 x 40 inches |
| signed: lower right |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| View from a Window |
|
oil on canvas:16 x 20 inches |
| signed: lower center |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Morning Chores - Winter |
| oil on canvas: 25 x 30 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| In Early November |
| oil on canvas: 25 x 30 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Farm in Autumn |
| oil on canvas: 20 x 24 inches |
| signed: lower right |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Leaving the Woods |
|
oil on canvas: 25 x 30 inches |
|
estate certificate: reverse |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| November Snow |
|
oil on canvas: 20 x 24 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
date: circa 1940 |
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Little Farm |
|
oil on canvas: 20 x 24 inches |
| signed: lower right |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| The Studio and Barn |
|
oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches |
| signed: lower right |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Jacob and the Lobstermen |
|
oil on canvas: 20 x 24 inches |
| estate stamp: reverse |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| The Little Skiff |
|
oil on canvas: 20 x 24 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Trees in Winter |
|
oil on canvas: 30 x 36 inches |
| signed: lower right |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Sunlit Street |
|
oil on canvas: 22 x 26 inches |
| signed: estate stamp reverse |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Motif #1 with Snow |
|
oil on canvas: 8 x 10 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
| Frank's |
|
oil on canvas: 25 x 30 inches |
| signed: lower right |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)