Charles Frederick Naegele (Tennessee/Georgia/New York, 1857-1944) oil on canvas Romantic sunset landscape painting with a woman holding a child seated at the foot of a tree. A second tree extends from the left edge of the canvas and together they cast dark shadows over the foreground. The composition is dominated by the luminous yellow sky juxtaposed against the contre-jour foreground. Naegele employs a heavy impasto technique throughout the painting, especially noticeable in the sky. Housed in an antique, carved wood frame with a garland motif. Canvas: 41" H x 36" W. Frame: 49 5/8" H x 45" W. Biography: Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Charles F. Naegele, who was of German descent, spent his early years in Memphis where his family moved in 1860. He is said to have begun copying drawings at an early age encouraged by Henry Scherer, a sculptor. By the time he was twelve, Naegele was apprenticed to a marble-cutting firm. After his father died in 1878, he worked for several years as a carriage painter and then as a sign painter. Naegele moved to New York in 1880 and worked in the studio of the landscape painter A.L. Rawson while studying under William Sartain and the American Impressionist William Merrit Chase. Although he executed the occasional landscape, including the present example, Naegele was known principally as a portraitist, and he was also recognized for portrait reliefs that he designed or medals. He worked with the New York City Parks Commission from 1888 to 1892. In 1894 he visited Europe, studying the great portraits of Holland, Belgium, and France. By 1929 Naegele retired to his hilltop studio, Artcrest, near Marietta, Georgia (Source: Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design, Volume 1, 1826-1925, ed. David Bernard Dearinger).

PROVENANCE: Private South Carolina Collection

CONDITION: Craquelure throughout and several areas of repair with inpainting primarily to landscape in lower-left quadrant, the largest being a 3 1/2" H x 1 1/2" W puncture with loss in shadows to left of the figures. Canvas has recently been lined. Frame has hairline cracks on upper and lower left-hand corners and is loose but stable in upper left.