A panoramic landscape with an oriental tower. Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1880 in the lower right corner, framed in a gold leafed cove pattern frame, canvas size approx. 10-3/4" x 17-1/4", with framing overall approx. 14-3/4" x 21-1/2".
Winckworth Allan Gay was a painter of landscapes including many scenes of Europe and the Orient and also did an occasional portrait. His landscape style combined Tonalism of the Barbizon School and serenity and vistas of the Hudson River School. He was one of the first Americans to be influenced by the Barbizon style of painting from France, was one of the earliest Americans to study in Paris, and was one of the first, possibly the first, American painter to live and paint in Japan. He was born in 1821 in West Hingham, Massachusetts. He is known to have studied with Robert W. Weir in West Point, New York in 1838, and was painting in the Boston area in the early 1840s, as suggested by his first known portrait, which was Ebenezer Gay, executed in 1845. He traveled throughout Europe for four years, beginning in 1847. He was an inveterate traveler, painting locales as varied as the Orient, Egypt, northeastern America and France. In Paris, Gay worked with Constant Troyon, and through him came under the influence of the Barbizon School of landscape painters in Barbizon, France. By 1873, he was on the road again to Egypt and Europe. And, in 1877, he traveled to Japan and other countries in the Orient, financing the journey by auctioning-off 112 paintings. He stayed in Japan for four years, spending time in Kamakura, Yokohama, Tokyo and Kyoto. askart.com
2,000/4,000
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