George Ault ( 1891-1948 )
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Silver Moonlight - 1918 Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches
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Provenance:
The artist’s wife, Louise
Private collection, New York, 1966
Drs. Noble & Jean Endicott, New York
Exhibited:
George Ault Nocturnes, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, December 6, 1973-January 6, 1974
Dreams and Dramas: Moonlight and Twilight in American Art, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York; May 22 - July 25, 2004
George Copeland Ault was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1891. One of four sons of a wealthy print-manufacturer, he began his art studies at an early age, upon the relocation of his family to London for business. Taking classes at both the Slade and St. John’s Wood Schools of Art, Ault was heavily influenced by the European avant-garde paintings he saw on his frequent sojourns to the museums of London and Paris. Ault’s first picture was exhibited in 1908, at the age of 17, for a show at the St. John’s Wood School. In 1911, Ault returned to the United States, first settling in New York City and then by 1938 in Woodstock, New York.
His first professional gallery show in 1920 was well received by art critics and the public. In 1921, the Society of Independent Artists recognized him by including his painting A New York Skyline in their exhibition “Our Choice of Independents.” Ault’s early works were primarily geometric urban landscapes, often depicting the skyline of New York City at night.
The effects of light, especially at night, were the basis for many of Ault’s paintings. Silver Moonlight is an early example of his focus on the subject. At center stands a large bare tree incised into the thick impasto of the night sky and palely illuminated by the winter moon. The tree’s limbs hang downward, and a row of four bare trees recede into the distance at right, echoing the somberness of the central tree. In the foreground a small, denuded bush appears beside the shadow of the central tree.
Ault’s evocation of the atmosphere of a moonlit winter night is created from only a few compositional elements, and thus Silver Moonlight anticipates the Precisionist work to follow. Despite its darkness in mood, Silver Moonlight has a stark and wistful beauty. With its sparse composition and it’s palette of silver/grays, the painting is akin to English and German Romantic literature, wherein beauty is often found in nature and in melancholy.
