PHILADELPHIA – Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia announces the recent acquisition of Abstract Bouquet, a large, daring, and complex still life by American Modernist painter Arthur B. Carles (1882 – 1952). Born in Philadelphia, Carles spent much of his life in the city painting, teaching and exhibiting his work. He painted Abstract Bouquet, a reflection of the French modernism and Cubism he experienced while traveling abroad, in the late 1930s in his studio on Evergreen Avenue in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, where Woodmere Art Museum is also located.
Abstract Bouquet is an important addition to the museum’s collection of modernist painting, and holds special significance to Woodmere Art Museum, whose mission is to tell the story of Philadelphia’s great artists. The painting has not been exhibited publically since 1940, when it was included in the 135th Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Now part of the Woodmere’s permanent collection, Abstract Bouquet will first be featured in Woodmere’s fall exhibition Mary G. L. Hood and Philadelphia Modernism, on display to the public beginning September 25, 2011 through January 8, 2012.
“Abstract Bouquet is a one of the great later paintings by Arthur B. Carles, who was breaking new ground in abstraction towards the end of his career,” said Dr. William R. Valerio, the Patricia Van Burgh Allison Director and CEO of Woodmere Art Museum. “As an artist and Philadelphian, Carles played a pivotal role in our city’s history of art, not only because he was an amazing colorist by his nature, but also because he went to Europe in the first decades of the century and absorbed and reinterpreted the lessons of the European modernists, returning to Philadelphia to inspire his many devoted students to learn from the greats, like Cezanne and Matisse, on the road to finding their own unique voices.” Mary G. L. Hood, her daughter Agnes Hood Miller, Jessie Drew-Baer, Morris Blackburn, Quita Brodhead, Jean Knox Chambers, Betty Hubbard, Leon Kelly, Mildred Miller, and Jane Piper are among the students of Carles included in Woodmere’s exhibition, Mary G. L. Hood and Philadelphia Modernism.
The painting brings with it an impressive provenance. David Bortin, a prominent Carles collector in Philadelphia, purchased Abstract Bouquet in 1939. The paintingwas then passed down within the Bortin family and has now found its permanent home in Woodmere’s collection. Abstract Bouquet is a partial donation to Woodmere Art Museum from Mr. Bortin’s stepdaughter, Fredrica Wagman, the noted author who formerly lived in Chestnut Hill, and now resides in Manhattan.
“I am absolutely delighted that Carles’ wonderful painting has found its permanent home at Woodmere, a public collection where it will hang with art made by subsequent generations of Philadelphia’s artists, including artists of today, who were inspired by him,” said Fredrica Wagman.
Recent Gifts
The Carles’ acquisition is one of many recent gifts. Woodmere Art Museum’s permanent collection continues to grow. Bill Scott, a prominent Philadelphia painter says, “In the last year, Woodmere has found new vigor in its mission to be the museum that engages with Philadelphia’s artists, past and present, and tells our stories. We share a unique history that is being explored in new ways, and so it has been easy to be generous.”
Recent gifts to Woodmere from artists and collectors include works of art by Ethel Ashton, Faye Swengel Badura, Quita Brodhead, Diane Burko, Cynthia Carlson, Thomas Chimes, Michael Ciervo, Jacqueline Cotter, Larry Day, Lynn Blackwell Denton, Murray Dessner, Jessie Drew-Bear, Jonathan Eckel, Sam Feinstein, Gertrude Fisher Fishman, John Formicola, Bill Freeland, Michael Gallagher, Moy Glidden, Robert Goodman, Penelope Harris, Mary G. L. Hood, Betty W. Hubbard, Eric Huckabee, Charles Kaprelian, Paul Keene, Ken Kewley, Juri Kim, Sam Maitin, Mitzi Melnicoff, Agnes Hood Miller, Edith Neff, Dona Nelson, E. J. O’Hara, Elizabeth Osborne, Andrea Packard, Peter Paone, Salvatore Pinto, Richard Ryan, Bill Scott, Stuart Shils, Mike Stack, Doris Staffel, Ursula Sternberg, Magda Vitale, Douglas Witmer, and Barbara Zucker, among others.
Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952)
Biography source: Hollis Taggart Galleries
Known for his uninhibited use of color and enthusiasm for modernist principles, Arthur B. Carles is considered a forerunner of the Abstract Expressionists. Born in Philadelphia in 1882, he trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As a student, Carles received two scholarships that allowed him to study and travel in Europe, where he immersed himself in the newest trends in art. He continued to make trans-Atlantic trips throughout his career and earned a reputation as an important conduit of European modernist ideas.
In 1910 Carles’s work was included in the “Younger American Painters” show held at 291, Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery. A one-man show at 291 followed in 1912, and Carles exhibited two landscapes at the seminal Armory Show of 1913. After these early successes, Carles became a fervent spokesman for modern art in his native Philadelphia and played an influential role as a teacher to younger artists.
During the 1920s, Carles began experimenting with cubist planes of color and renewed his acquaintance with Hans Hofmann, whom he had met years before in Paris. The two artists, accompanied by Carles’s daughter, Mercedes, who was Hofmann’s pupil, lived together in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1934.
In the last phase of his career, Carles painted a number of ambitious abstract compositions, despite repeated hospitalizations for alcoholism. His life as an artist drew to an abrupt close in December 1941 with a fall and stroke that left him an invalid until his death in 1952.
Carles is represented in major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, all in New York; the Newark Museum, New Jersey; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Phillips Collection, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, all in Washington, D.C.; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia; and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Image Credit
Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952), Abstract Bouquet, 1939, oil on canvas, 33 ½ x 39 ½ in.
