George Henry Hall (1825–1913)

GEORGE HENRY HALL (1825–1913)
Branch of Cherries, 1875
Oil on canvas, 10 3/8 x 15 in.
Signed and dated (at lower right): Geo. Henry Hall 1875

EX COLL.: [Adelson Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts, 1967]; to private collection, until 2018; to sale, Nye Auctions, Bloomfield, New Jersey, January 31, 2018, no. 249; to private collection, until the present

George Henry Hall’s tightly cropped design and precise modeling of the bright red fruit and green leafage underscores the legacy of his academic training in Düsseldorf as well as his love of color—the latter being one of the reasons he took up still life painting in the first place. With equal care, Hall deftly applied daubs of white to denote the glint of light on the surfaces of the fruit, a method that helps propel the sharply focused still-life elements forward in the picture plane. Hall offsets and balances this transcriptive approach by portraying the adjacent landscape and sky with soft, fluent brushwork and a muted low-keyed palette––Barbizon School strategies that imbue the image with an aura of mood and poetic effect. Not surprisingly, Hall found a ready market for still lifes such as Branch of Cherries, attracting patronage from affluent collectors seeking intimate vignettes of nature for their dining rooms and parlors.