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With thick strokes of the brush, Weir suggested the textures of porcelain, fabric, and food.

This assemblage of fruit, vegetables, and tableware is unusual for Weir, who preferred landscapes.

Weir helped form The Ten, a diverse group identified with American Impressionism.

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Julian Alden Weir

Still Life, about 1902-1905

oil on canvas

25 x 36 in.

James E. Roberts Fund

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J. Alden Weir was the youngest of 16 children of the artist Robert W. Weir.  The younger Weir’s art education began with training from his father.  At 18, he enrolled at the National Academy School in New York and then studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Weir began working directly from nature and soon came under the influence of French Impressionism.  In the 1880s Weir focused on still-life painting along with landscape.  He favored floral studies painted with a dark palette, which did not reflect his interest in Impressionism.  Weir was also a portrait painter and married one of his models.  He had a New York studio and supported himself with portrait painting and teaching.  Weir became associated with the American Impressionists Childe Hassam and John Twachtman and was a founding member of the Society of American Artists, who rebelled against the strict academic standards of the National Academy of Design.  Weir joined with his colleagues to form the Ten American Painters, a stylistically diverse organization usually identified with American Impressionism. Weir was one of the organizers of the 1913 Armory show in New York, which introduced avant-garde European art to the American public. 

This still life, an ambitious assemblage of fruit, vegetables, and tableware, is unusual in Weir’s oeuvre.  With thick strokes of the brush, Weir suggested the textures of porcelain, fabric, and food and created a straightforward composition remarkably close in spirit to works of 19th-century French realists. However, the loose handling of the paint reflects a less formal interest in the subject than the earlier French painters had. 

Reference

Doreen Bolger Burke. J. Alden Weir: An American Impressionist, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983.  ASIN: B001U6OI24