Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Provenance:

Estate of the artist

James Graham & Sons, New York

Private Collection, New York

Exhibited:

Guy Pène du Bois: Painter of Modern Life, James Graham & Sons, New York, May 11 – June 30, 2006

Recorded:

Fahlman, Betsy. Guy Pène du Bois: Painter of Modern Life, New York: James Graham & Sons, 2004, p. 30, illus. p. 112.

Born in Brooklyn but raised in a Creole household, Pène du Bois began his artistic career at the age of fifteen. Enrolled in classes at the New York School of Art, he studied under three of America’s leading painters: William Merritt Chase, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Robert Henri. The latter’s realist philosophy was perhaps the greatest influence on the young artist and formed the basis of his aesthetic language. Following Henri’s example, Pène du Bois in his early years employed a darkened palette and rapid brushwork to convey a true sense of life. In contrast to his teacher’s naturalism, however, the young artist formulated a stylized aesthetic that gave his work an entirely unique character.

The fashionable street life and stage performances of Paris, which the artist visited during an extended trip with his father in 1905, inspired his choice of contemporary subject matter. Returning to New York the following year, Pène du Bois found work at the New York American, serving as a crime reporter by day and an opera critic by night. This window into high and low society provided him with material on which to base his paintings and drawings. The inclusion of six of his works in the seminal Armory Show of 1913 led to a successful relationship with Kraushaar Galleries, an early venue for modern art in New York, where he was given his first one-man exhibition in 1922. Kraushaar regularly sold paintings, but the artist continued to work as a critic and a teacher in order to support his family.

Upon turning forty, Pène du Bois moved with his family to Paris in order to fully dedicate himself to his painting. It was during these years in France that the artist’s mature style was cemented, having developed the modern stylishness and bright palette that makes a Guy Pène du Bois painting so distinctive. Exemplifying these stylistic traits, Bull Market Promenade depicts a businessman striding along a quiet stone-lined walkway. Smartly attired in dress pants, a cut-away jacket, and a bowler hat, the white-haired gentleman exudes the assurance of the economic prosperity that preceded the Great Depression. The title of the work furthers this notion: in economic terms, a bull market is characterized by optimism and investor-consumer confidence. Thus, in the painting, the businessman’s walk is a display of such an attitude.

Rendered with a thin, brushy application of paint, the work possesses a quintessential Pène du Bois color scheme of teal green, sky blue, and red violet, which endows the composition with a buoyant feeling. Using this limited number of hues, the artist applied them in different combinations to wonderful effect. The impression of the trees on the right is conveyed purely by strokes of the red and blue-violet pigments, while the man’s shadow repeats those shades with the addition of the green color of the ground. The sfumato-like haziness of these areas provides a powerful contrast to the saturated black of the man’s clothing. In the relatively empty space of the composition, the strength of the man’s shadow stands out as a distinctive visual and interpretive element. Generally, Pène du Bois imbued his works with underlying significations; hence, it is probable that the shadow connotes a darker side to the otherwise cheerful image. Displaying the artist’s most characteristic thematic and stylistic trends, Bull Market Promenade ultimately embodies his introspections into the concept of the capitalist stereotype.