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About Louis M. Eilshemius
Louis Michael Eilshemius (1864-1941) studied widely in Europe: in Switzerland, Germany and Paris. After developing a Barbizon style of landscape painting in the early years, Eilshemius transformed his style radically into a kind of primitive modernism. He billed himself as the "Grand Parnassian and Transcendental Eagle of the Arts," in a self-aggrandizing attitude that rivaled Gustave Moreau’s egotism. Criticism of this eccentric artist varies considerably: Stieglitz and Marcel Duchamp were sympathetic, and Katherine Dreier gave Eilshemius a one-man show, while he was rejected by the Armory Show committee. By the 1930s, he was a smashing success as an avant-garde symbol, and today he is recognized as a primitive romanticist, as well as a modernist painter of great individuality.
This moonlit landscape recalls the works of Albert Pinkham Ryder. The strangely organic, almost animated forms that frame the landscape are difficult to define. They are uncompromising in their definite and ominous shapes, creating an abstract central open area. One might say, this is a dream landscape of an American visionary. |
Paintings by Louis M. Eilshemius
| Two Figures in a Moonlight Landscape |
| oil on sheet music, 10 ½ x 12 ¾ inches |
| signed: lower right |
| date: circa 1910 - 1915 |
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