William James Glackens (American, 1870-1938). Bathers at the Lake, Conway, New Hampshire, circa 1920. ...

Description

William James Glackens (American, 1870-1938)
Bathers at the Lake, Conway, New Hampshire, circa 1920
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 inches (63.5 x 76.2 cm)
Inscribed with Glackens Estate number on the stretcher: G-364

PROVENANCE:
​The artist;
Estate of the above;
M.S. Rau, New Orleans, Louisiana (as Lake Bathers);
John H. Surovek, Palm Beach Florida (as Lake Bathers);
Private collection, Edwards, Colorado, acquired from the above.

William Glackens spent five summers in Conway, New Hampshire, between 1920 and 1924, settling into a house on the lake. These years offered the artist a welcome respite from New York City. His days were spent idly at Walker Pond-later renamed Conway Lake-where he painted, fished, and found renewal in the quiet rhythms of rural life. Unlike his predecessors who sought to capture the rugged grandeur of New Hampshire's mountains and wilderness, Glackens turned his attention to the intimate landscapes of daily experience. As William H. Gerdts observed, the artist "concentrated instead on painting his own local environment, primarily when summer was turning to autumn and variegated colors were beginning to tint the landscape" (William Glackens, New York, 1996, p. 135).

Bathers at the Lake, Conway, New Hampshire, reveals the artist's full command of color and light, his palette bursting with brilliant blues, violets, greens, and yellows that capture the heat of late summer and the shimmering reflection of water under the sun. His brushwork, a lively weave of overlapping strokes, renders the rippled surface of the lake in vibrant layers of blue, purple, and pink, mirrored above by a harmonious band of green trees and distant rose-tinted mountains. While Glackens' treatment of color and atmosphere reflects the influence of French Impressionism-particularly Renoir-Bathers at the Lake, Conway, New Hampshire embodies a distinctly American sensibility, defined by its informality, luminosity, and in the vitality of outdoor recreation. Inspired by the artist's own family outings to Walker Pond, the present work depicts bathers clad in swimsuits gathering around a mound of rock, where one adventurous figure prepares to dive, personifying the carefree rhythm and joy of a summer's day. Within this personalized vision of nature, Glackens transformed his summer landscapes into a stage for free expression-offering a refrain from the commercial works that occupied him during the previous decade.

Glackens' typically recorded society's movements through everyday life, whether in the crowded metropolis of New York or the leisurely respite of a seaside afternoon. Bathers at the Lake, Conway, New Hampshire, demonstrates the artist's shift from city life to respite in the countryside, replacing the chatter of downtown cafés and busy promenades with more intimate accommodations centering family and nature. The artist's New Hampshire paintings present a noticeable focus inward, transforming these summertime scenes into private expressions of harmony and repose.


Estimate: $200,000 - $300,000.

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