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About William Wendt
William Wendt (1865-1946), called the Dean of California landscape painters, was born in Bentzen, Germany. He immigrated to Chicago at the age of fifteen. After two trips to Europe, Wendt moved to California and married the sculptor Julia Bracken. Wendt became a member of the National Academy of Design and the California Art Club, where he served as president between 1911 and 1918. His practice was to sketch out of doors, attempting to render exactly what he saw, then he would finish his large canvases in the studio. Especially in later years, Wendt worked with broad brushwork in a post-impressionist style that paralleled the California Arts and Crafts mode of design. His compositions sometimes recall Japanese models.
This rather bucolic scene was executed in Illinois, not far from Chicago. The brilliant, small strokes reveal Wendt’s early pre-California impressionism, a style he witnessed frequently in Chicago. Painted en plein air, this midwestern rural scene serves as a fine counterpart to similar works being done in the pastoral French environment of Giverny. Haystacks were popular motifs for impressionist painters to render, from Monet to Lilla Cabot Perry, to John Leslie Breck. Wendt’s wheatshocks provide a similar subject and form a subtle diagonal that leads the eye toward the houses, sunken in the middleground valley. The warm but colorful fall sky seems to embrace the rich farmland it covers. |
Paintings by William Wendt
| Wheatshocks, Fox river Valley, Illinois |
| oil on canvas: 16 x 24 inches |
| signed: lower right |
| date: circa 1905 |
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