2013 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 123
Verso:
Label, FFCA Morton Fleischer Collection
Exhibition label, Thomas Gilcrease Museum
According to Scott A. Shields, Associate Director and Chief Curator, Crocker Art Museum, “Leaving Paris in September [1922], the family headed south to the French Alps, where they probably found lodgings in the town of Chamonix, situated below the looming form of the Mont Blanc massif. … At this time he [Payne] also painted Peaks of Argentière which depicts the Argentière Glacier rising above the town of Argentière. As in scenes of the Sierra Nevada and the American Southwest, he stressed the grandeur of nature through the enormity of the mountains within the space of a picture. However, the settlements in France’s high country, not present in the Sierra, challenged him in new ways, and he focused on the subtle aesthetic accommodations of man to the natural environment. In Peaks of Argentière the red-orange roofs of valley homes echo the tones of the rocky buttes above, while a mountain glacier curves between the summit and the foothills.”
EXHIBITIONS:
Edgar Alwyn [sic] , Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles, California, April 1923
Masterpieces of California Impressionism, Thomas Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, February 20 - May 22, 1988
Edgar Payne: The Scenic Journey
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, February 11, - May 6, 2012
Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, California, June 3 - October 14, 2012
Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, December 1, 2012 - March 24, 2013
LITERATURE:
Scott A. Shields, PhD and Patricia Trenton PhD, Edgar Payne: The Scenic Journey (Petaluma, California: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2012), page 114, illustrated