Jane Piper (1916-1991), Pears and Compote. Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 in., signed. Courtesy Rehs Galleries, New York, NY.

Eastman Johnson was born in Maine and lived in New York City, were he cemented his reputation as a distinctive genre painter and portraitist. In 1859, after studying extensively in Europe. the turning point in his career was marked by a New York exhibition of the painting Negro Life in the South, that depicts the private life of African-American slaves in Washington, D.C., at a time when slavery was the subject of national debate. Johnson spent the next two decades depicting scenes of American life.

This idyllic image of Johnson’s 5-year-old daughter, Ethel, feeding a lamb, was painted at their summer home on the island of Nantucket in 1875. It is emblematic of Johnson’s turn to tranquil, domestic subjects after the Civil War.

Thomas Colville Fine Art
111 Old Quarry Road • Guilford, CT 06437
(203) 453-2449 • tlc@thomascolville.com • www.thomascolville.com

Grant Wood (1892-1942), Study for Dinner for Threshers, 1934. Charcoal, pencil and chalk on brown paper, 18 x 71 in., signed lower right: ‘Grant Wood’. Courtesy Debra Force Fine Art, New York, NY.

Jane Piper (1916-1991)
Pears and Compote

Jane Piper was a distinguished American artist known for her vibrant still life and abstract compositions. Born in Philadelphia, Piper demonstrated an early affinity for the arts and began studying with Grace Gemberling (1903-1997). In 1935, she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, first studying under Daniel Garber and then with Arthur B. Carles, who profoundly influenced her approach to color and form.

Piper’s work is characterized by her use of color, dynamic compositions, and a distinctive blend of abstraction and representation. Her early career was marked by a traditional approach to still life and landscape painting. However, under Carles’ mentorship, she began to experiment more freely with abstraction, infusing her work with a vibrant, modernist sensibility that pulsates with energy and life.

Rehs Galleries
20 W. 55th Street, 5th Floor • New York, NY 10019
(212) 355-5710 • info@rehs.com • www.rehs.com

William Corning Stacy (1836-1919), Untitled (View of Lake Champlain), ca. 1900. Oil on canvas, 5½ x 8½ in. Courtesy J. Kenneth Fine Art, Shelburne, VT.

Grant Wood (1892–1942)
Study for Dinner for Threshers

Study for Dinner for Threshers is a full-scale, detailed preparatory drawing that Grant Wood completed for his painting Dinner for Threshers, now in the collection of the de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Harkening back to his early childhood in Iowa, the drawing shows the midday meal shared by neighboring farmers who came together during the threshing season, moving from farm to farm to share in the labor.

A quintessential example of American regionalism, the frieze-like composition and scale show the influence of Renaissance religious altar pieces on Wood’s work. All of the details, from the dining room chairs to the china and the tablecloths are from the Wood home, making it both deeply personal for the artist as well as a broader celebration of Midwestern farming life.

Debra Force Fine Art
13 E. 69th Street, Suite 4F • New York, NY 10021 • (212) 734-3636
info@debraforce.com • www.debraforce.com

Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), Feeding the Lamb. Oil on board, 5½ x 6½ in., signed ‘E.J.’ and dated ‘75’, lower center. Courtesy Thomas Colville Fine Art, Guilford, CT.

William Corning Stacy (American, 1836-1919)
Untitled (View of Lake Champlain)

A recent acquisition by J. Kenneth Fine Art is another turn-of-the-century work to add to the gallery’s collection of Hudson River School and historical Vermont landscape paintings.

William Corning Stacy was a late 19th century landscape painter. Stacy graduated from the University of  Vermont in 1859, and studied painting in Rhode Island. A prominent resident of Vermont’s largest city of Burlington, Stacy is best known for his bucolic scenes of  Vermont’s Green Mountains and sweeping vistas of Lake Champlain, an example of which is featured here. Stacy’s work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.

J. Kenneth Fine Art
Shelburne, VT 06437 • (802) 540-0267
jkennethfineart@gmail.com • www.jkennethfineart.com

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