Lot 48: Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914)

La Petite BouquetiŠre signed and inscribed 'Charles Sprague Pearce Paris' (lower right) oil on canvas 22 x 18 in. (55.9 x 45.7 cm.) PROVENANCE By descent in the family to the present owner. EXHIBITION Chicago, Illinois, Inter-State Industrial Exposition of Chicago, 12th Annual Exhibition, September-October 1884, no. 16 NOTES Charles Sprague Pearce was a painter perhaps best known for his portraits and genre scenes. Pearce settled in Paris and studied at the Leon Bonnat School, following the advice of William Morris Hunt. At the Leon Bonnat, he studied with fellow student John Singer Sargent, and soon became a member of an artist circle comprised of other expatriates including Chester Loomis, Edwin Blashfield, and Milne Ramsey. Pearce's realistic interpretation of rural life was allied in both style and subject matter to the French Academic peasant painters. The strong contrast of light and shadow, meticulous detail, and solid modeling apparent in La Petite BouquetiŠre demonstrate Pearce's continuing debt to artists such as William Bouguereau, Jean Fran‡ois Millet, Jules Breton, and most of all Jules Bastien-Lepage.