Monday, April 17, 2023

I finally found Hubert Vos' "Harmonie" !!

In 2011 I was in the lobby of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu and glanced into an art gallery that was there at the time (long gone now).  Against the far wall was a large (72 x 44 1/4 in., 182.9 x 112.4 cm.), impressive painting.   I took two reference photos, one of which is below.


Unfortunatly, I failed to make note of its title and who painted it.  I regretted that failure when I returned home to Seattle, and tried to research the information.  Searching failed because the idea that the artist was Austrian stuck in my head.

Recently, I was going through my miscellaneous images file searching for blog subjects.  The image of the Alice Barney painting shown in the Gallery below seemed interesting, so I looked for more paintings by the artist.  Eureka!!  After all those years, the painting I saw at the Royal Hawaiian popped up:


Harmonie - 1910 - via Christie's

It was by Dutch painter Hubert Vos - nĂ© Josephus Hubertus Vos (1855-1935), Wikipedia entry here, who lived at various times in England, France, China, Korea, Hawaii, and America. The subject is presumably a large room in his home in Rhode Island, though the ceiling seems unreasonably high (artistic license?).  In the background are Chinese and Western objects.

Vos was a skilled representational painter, as can be seen in "Harmonie" above and the paintings below.

Gallery

Woman at Piano - c.1914
This seems to be a different corner of the same room, the piano having been moved.  The pianist's hair is dark, not blonde.  The ceiling is lower and the Asiatic art not much in evidence.  Note Vos' skill depicting the wooden floor, the same as in the previous image.

Portrait of Empress Dowager Cixi - 1905
One of his works from the Far East.

Rome buildings - 1923
Another interesting painting due in part to its cropping of the subject matter.

Alice Barney in White Satin - 1894
Alice Pike Barney (1857-1931), Wikipedia entry here, was an artist and promoter of culture in Washington, D.C.

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