(born 1867; died 1925) American painter. A native of San Gabriel, California, Guy Rose is revered as one of the most important turn-of-the-century American Impressionists and is arguably the most significant California painter who worked in the plein-air tradition. Rose began his formal artistic education at the California School of Design in San Francisco, where he studied with Raymond Dabb Yelland and Emil Carlsen. Rose traveled to Paris in 1888 and enrolled at the Academie Julian, where he would study for three years and exhibit at the Salon. In the spring of the following year, Rose visited Giverny in the French countryside. Rose was drawn to the small town’s country setting and, like many other artists of the day, was influenced by the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet who was living there at the time. Rose’s exposure to Monet’s impressions of the French countryside and his conversations with Monet about his art had a lifelong and profound affect on Rose’s work. A distinct but gradual shift from the academic style of Rose’s early paintings toward Impressionism can be seen in the decade after this visit to Giverny as he began to incorporate a looser and brighter style into his own art. (W. South, Guy Rose: American Impressionist, Oakland, California, 1995, pp. 24-25). In 1904 Rose and his wife purchased a cottage in Giverny and converted it into a studio and home. Rose’s paintings in the first years of the 20th century exhibit a full commitment to painting in the Impressionist style. “He painted landscapes and figures, and combinations thereof, with a mature sensitivity to the interpretation of transient color and fugitive light” (Guy Rose: American Impressionist, p. 40).
Credit: Christie’s, Beverly Hills, April 27, 2005- California, Western and American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture. Lot 10
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Christie’s, Beverly Hills, November 17, 2004- California, Western and American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture. Lot 9