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About Dawson Dawson-Watson
London-born Dawson-Watson, the son of an illustrator, studied with America’s first impressionist, Mark Fisher and was already exhibiting at the Royal Academy as a teenager. In Paris he worked under John Singer Sargent’s teacher, Carolus-Duran, and others. Dawson-Watson was one of the first to discover Giverny. He told how the initial group of American painters (Breck, Metcalf, Wendel, Robinson and Bruce) noticed Giverny in passing, then convinced the innkeeper Baudy to add rooms to his hotel to accommodate them. Reportedly, John Leslie Breck invited Dawson-Watson to join them. He signed the Hôtel Baudy guest register on 12 May 1888 and spent five years there. Dawson-Watson had discovered Monet’s work in 1886 but he claimed that the group was unaware of Monet’s presence at Giverny.
Harvest Time shows a continuation of Dawson-Watson’s interest in peasant subject matter but there is no longer an academic composition. Instead, this haphazard view shows only a wedge of sky in the upper right. We are immersed in the field, which contains bravura brushwork and subtle violet shadows. Other impressionist elements include the violet-toned roofs near the upper edge of the canvas, as well as the unusual composition, mentioned above. The painter has convincingly conveyed a hot summer day and the figures suggest spatial recession. A later description in 1906 of the artist as a "painter of light" applies here: "one always feels in studying one of his compositions that the whole field is flooded with the light of out-of-doors."
In 1893, Dawson-Watson went to America where he spent four years directing the Hartford Art Society. The St. Botolph Club in Boston exhibited his works in 1894. After spending the years 1897 to 1900 in Canada, Dawson-Watson moved to Boston, then to St. Louis in 1904 but he did not exhibit at the Universal Exposition that year. He taught at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts (1904-15) and organized a summer school in Brandsville, Missouri. Dawson-Watson’s final years (1926-39) were spent in San Antonio, Texas. |
Paintings by Dawson Dawson-Watson
| Harvest Time |
| oil on canvas: 34 x 50 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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