Permanent Collection Record
Images
Metadata
Object ID |
1945.10183 |
Collection |
Painting Collection |
Media Collection |
Watercolor Collection |
Title |
Street In Provincetown |
Date |
Circa 1930 |
Artist |
Karl Kappes (1861-1943) |
Signature |
K. KAPPES |
Signature Location |
Bottom of paper, viewer's right |
Description |
Like many artists of his generation, Karl Kappes (1861-1943) began his career as an academically trained realist and ended it as an enthusiastic Impressionist. Born in May 1861, in Zanesville, Ohio, Charles A. Kappes developed an early interest in art, which prompted his parents to enroll him in drawing classes with local Ohio artist Charles Craig (1846-1931). Following in the footsteps of other young aspiring Midwestern artists during the last several decades of the nineteenth century, especially those with German heritage, Kappes travelled to Munich and enrolled at the Academy where he primarily painted portraits using a reserved color palette and dramatic lighting. Aspects of Kappes's Munich School style foreshadowed his future Impressionist tendencies, including his rapid approach to painting, loose brushwork, thick application of pigment, and the luminous surface quality of his canvases. By 1912, when Kappes was 51 years old, he moved to Toledo, Ohio, where he continued to paint and where he became a highly sought-after instructor. After 1918, he and many of his students spent summers at his rustic home and studio in Texas, Ohio, located roughly 30 miles southwest of the city. Here, along the banks of the Maumee River, Kappes's dark, naturalistic Munich School style portraits gave way to light, Impressionistic landscapes. Unlike his early wanderlust, which took him abroad, Kappes now ventured closer to home and into his own backyard. Developing a softer color palette, looser brushwork, and a preference for natural light, Kappes depicted the fields, white clapboard houses, flower gardens, and the meandering dirt roads of Henry County, Ohio. These domesticated rural landscapes are nostalgic tributes to an earlier way of life. The themes of his American Impressionist art evoke a simpler time, despite the remarkable industrial and economic changes taking place around him in the first several decades of the twentieth century. Kappes embraced Impressionist techniques and immersed himself in Ohio's picturesque scenery capturing the charm of country life, omitting the visible evidence of modernity. |
Medium |
Watercolor, Paper |
Technique |
Painted |
Culture |
American |
School |
American Impressionism |
Place of Origin |
Zanesville, Ohio, United States |
Credit Line |
Gift of the Karl Kappes |
People |
Kappes, Karl |
Search Terms |
American Art American Artists American Paintings Autumn Fall Fences Grass Houses Landscapes Ohio Art Ohio Artists Paintings Porches Sky Stairs Trees Watercolor Paintings Zanesville Artists Zanesville, Ohio |
Location |
On view in the Dr. and Mrs. Juan Lacerda Hallway Gallery, 2nd Floor |