Philip Leslie Hale (1865–1931)

PHILIP LESLIE HALE (1865–1931)
Autumn Fruits, about 1911–12
Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in.
Signed (indistinctly, at lower right): P L HALE

EXHIBITED: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, February–March 1912, 107th Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, no. 127, as “Autumn Fruit” // Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, May 1912, Nineteenth Annual Exhibition of American Art // Philadelphia Water Color Club, Pennsylvania, November–December 1912, 10th Annual Exhibition, no. 11 // San Francisco Palace of the Fine Arts, California, 1915, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, no. 1719 // Guild of Boston Artists, Massachusetts, 1916, Exhibition of Paintings by Philip L. Hale, no. 7, as “Autumn Fruit” // Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1916–17, Exhibition of Contemporary Artists, no. 100 // Guild of Boston Artists, Massachusetts, 1919, Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Philip L. Hale, no. 11 // Milwaukee Art Institute, Wisconsin, 1924, Exhibition of Paintings by Philip Leslie Hale, no. 17 // Philadelphia, 1926, Paintings, Sculpture and Prints in the Department of Fine Arts, Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition, no. 222 illus. // Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, 1999, American Paintings and Sculpture VIII, illus. [n.p.]

EX COLL.: [Wildenstein Galleries, New York, 1970s]; Robert J. Coleman, New York: to his estate, 2022–24

After around 1902, Hale abandoned his advanced aesthetic in favor of a more acceptable mode of Impressionism, continuing his interest in conveying the effects of light and color in conjunction with a more traditional approach in rendering the figure. Hale s later figure subjects are also characterized by a greater involvement with the depiction of women in flower gardens. The present work, Autumn Fruits, is an especially fine example of his work in this genre, demonstrating his practice of having his models pose in diaphanous white dresses and, in the case of the woman on the left, wearing a “veiled hat.” The figure on the right, about to place something into her companion's basket, appears in several paintings by Hale from the late 1900s and early 1910s, including White Roses (National Arts Club, New York).