William Charles Anthony Frerichs (North Carolina/American/Belgium/Netherlands 1829-1905) oil on canvas landscape painting, possibly the Blue Ridge Mountains, depicting a lone figure in a red jacket fishing along a river bank, surrounded by trees with autumn foliage. A gentle mountain range rises in the background beneath a twilight sky dotted with pink clouds. Signed with monogram "WF" lower left. Housed in a later parcel gilt and ebonized frame. Sight: 6 3/4" H x 11 5/8" W. Framed: 9 7/8" H x 14 7/8" D. Artist biography (from the Columbus Museum of Art, Georgia): "William Charles Anthony Frerichs was born in the Netherlands. He studied art in The Hague as a child where he entered the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten at the age of six, under the tutelage of landscape painters Andreas Schelfhout and Bartholomeus J. van Hove, who were both important figures in Dutch art in the mid-nineteenth century. Schelfhout had a particular interest in light and in the reflective qualities of snow and water, a concern that was to have a lasting effect on the art of his pupil. In 1850, Frerichs immigrated to America and settled in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Little is known of his early years in New York except that he exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1852, and he was elected a member of the New York Sketch Club in 1852. In late 1854, he had accepted a teaching position as Professor of Drawing, Painting, and French at the Greensboro Female College (now known as Greensboro College). He arrived in North Carolina in early 1855. During these years, Frerichs often rambled the Blue Ridge, the Great Smokies, and the Appalachians, collecting material in the form of sketches from which he would draw inspiration for full-size canvases during the rest of his career. He was one of the first painters to venture into western North Carolina, which in the 1850s was still quite untamed. After the conclusion of the Civil War Frerichs decided to return to the northeast, where he lived in the New York-New Jersey area for the rest of his life."

PROVENANCE: Property from the Collection of Jo Ann Cline Yates, Lookout Mountain Tennessee.

CONDITION: Craquelure throughout. Minute scattered retouching to right side of riverbank. Canvas has been wax lined.