Tuscan Hills

Artist Frank Duveneck American, 1848–1919

Datecirca 1900

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions22 3/4 × 31 1/2 in. (57.8 × 80 cm)
frame: 31 1/2 × 40 1/4 × 2 1/2 in. (80 × 102.2 × 6.4 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of Jim and Betty Becher in honor of Joseph M. Bryan, Jr.

Object number2021.14

On View

On view

Label TextKentucky-born artist Frank Duveneck spent much of his artistic career teaching and painting in Europe. With his students he traveled to Italy in 1879 and ran in artistic circles that included James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Julian Alden Weir.

Duveneck married the artist Elizabeth Boott in 1886, and they lived in the countryside outside Florence until 1888, when Boott unexpectedly died. Painted years after her death, Tuscan Hills expresses spontaneity in its brushwork, departing from Duveneck’s earlier sense of realism (as in his portrait of Mary E. Goddard, in the NCMA collection). Its broad daubs of gestural paint and light-infused atmosphere—representing a moment somewhere between day and night—demonstrate an interest in impressionism.
[L. Applebaum, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," 2022]ProvenanceCreated ca. 1900; collection of the artist; estate of the artist, 1919; Frank B. Duveneck, the artist’s son; by descent to his daughter, Elizabeth Duveneck Dana; by descent to private collection, California; Jim and Betty Becher; given to NCMA, 2021.Published ReferencesFrancis Bilodeau, Frank Duveneck (exhibition catalogue) (Chapellier Gallery, New York, 1972), no. 59, illus.

Robert Neuhaus, Unsuspected Genius: The Art and Life of Frank Duveneck (San Francisco, Bedford Press: 1987), 66, 132, illus.
Exhibition HistoryNew York, NY, Chapellier Gallery, “Frank Duveneck,” 1972, no. 59, illus.

San Francisco, CA, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, “Talent of the Brush: Fourteen Paintings by Frank Duveneck,” October 18, 1986–February 1, 1987.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," October 7, 2022–present. Object Rights Statement

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