Lot 101: Charles Wheedon Rain (1911-1985)

Apple Blossom--Sicily
signed 'Rain' (lower right)--signed again, dated and inscribed with title 'APPLE BLOSSOM -SICILY/C.RAIN/SEPT. 1978/NEW YORK, N.Y.' (on the reverse)
oil on masonite
13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm.)

Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, 1982.
Private collection, Queens, New York, until 2005.

Charles Rain had a life-long fascination with Renaissance painting, particularly with 16th Century Italian Mannerist art. The clarity and precision of Agnolo Bronzino's linear compositions thrilled Rain and set him on a path to perfect an almost lost technique of underpainting and glazing, so meticulously executed that not a brush stroke is apparent.

Rain usually worked on wood panels covered with gesso, applying thin layers of paint, one on top of the other. Upon this underpainting he would develop the picture with thin glazes of color often using brushes having only two or three bristles. Such laborious detail meant that at times only fractions of an inch might be painted each day.