cover image Bernhard Gutmann: An American Impressionist

Bernhard Gutmann: An American Impressionist

Percy North. Abbeville Press, $85 (199pp) ISBN 978-1-55859-611-5

German-born Gutmann (1869-1936) emigrated to the U.S. at 23 and established a solid reputation with his work as a graphic artist and teacher and for his colorful landscapes, genre scenes, still lifes and portraits. After his death he was forgotten, however; because he had married into a wealthy family and had no pressing need to sell his paintings, most of them remained out of the public eye. In this richly illustrated monograph, North, a professor of art history at Montgomery College in Maryland, presents a straightforward account of the artist's relatively uneventful life, which, except for occasional trips abroad, was spent in Lynchburg, Va., New York and Connecticut. The excitement is in the paintings--luminous canvases glowing with brilliant impressionist colors applied in bold post-impressionist brush strokes or directly from the tube. Although a somber element crept into the later works, when Gutmann was deeply affected by the stock market crash of 1929, the rise of Nazism in Germany and illness in his family, most of the paintings are sunny creations that, in the impressionist tradition, have immediate appeal because of their sparkling, sensuous colors and their cheerful evocation of everyday life. This beautifully produced book with superb color reproductions should reestablish Gutmann's reputation. (Mar.)