Questroyal 2009

Francis Augustus Silva ( 1835 – 1886 ) Plate 39 Palisades of the Hudson River Oil on canvas 9 1 / 4 x 18 3 / 16 inches Signed lower right: Silva. provenance The North Point Gallery, San Francisco Berry-Hill Galleries, NewYork Private collection, acquired from the above literature M. D. Mitchell and JohnWilmerding, Francis A. Silva ( 1835 – 1886 ): In His Own Light , exh. cat. (NewYork: Berry-Hill Galleries, 2002 ), p. 110 , plate 44; p. 143 . He has painted marine pictures mostly, and no one of our artists has caught the spirit of the sea in its quiet moods with more certainty. The Independent, 1881 1 Silva emerges as one of the late practitioners of luminism in whose hands the luminist vocabulary of smooth surface and halated light still maintains its authentic voice. barbara novak, art historian, 1986 2 In the hands of Silva . . . the subtle manipulation of light and atmosphere was an aesthetic device that transcended naturalism and became an almost abstract means of expressing feeling–– or “sentiment,” in nineteenth-century terminology. john i. h. baur, art historian, curator, and director of the Whitney Museum of American art ( 1968 – 1974 ) , 1980 3 Painter of Feeling An artistic and cultural critic as well as painter, Francis Silva exhorted artists to find truth by tempering naturalistic representation with inner feeling, rather than relying on technical tricks of the trade. He remarked: “A picture must be more than a skillfully painted canvas; it must tell something. . . . Many of our artists learn certain artists’ tricks and then repeat them continually, with no idea of the deeper meaning of art.” 4 Silva put his beliefs into practice, focusing on particular sites along the Hudson River. In Palisades of the Hudson River , Silva juxtaposes texture and color, con- trasting the curving shoreline and prominent rocks of the foreground with glassy water and sky. Like Kingston Point, Hudson River (Thyssen- Bornemisza Museum, Madrid) and View of the Hudson (Erving and Joyce Wolf Collection, Texas), this work is a serene view of the Hudson, Silva’s favorite and greatest subject. — imh Silva’s paintings are now in such prominent collections as the Brooklyn Museum, New-York Historical Society, National Gallery of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid. 1 “Fine Arts,” The Independent Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts 33 , no. 1704 (July 28, 1881 ): 8 . 2 Barbara Novak, Nineteenth-century American Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (New York: Artabras, 1986 ), p. 143 . 3 John I. H. Baur, “Francis A Silva: Beyond Luminism,” The Magazine Antiques 118 (November 1980 ): 1024 . 4 Francis A. Silva, “American vs. Foreign-American Art,” The Art Union 1 (June–July 1884 ): 130 – 131 .