Woodland stream. Oil on canvas, signed in the lower left corner, dated '99, framed in the original heavily ornamented period frame finished in bronze, the canvas size 14" x 23", and with the frame overall approx. 25-1/2" x 35-1/4". There are inscriptions in pencil on the stretchers indicating an earlier owner, S. Boyd & Co.
Born in France near Strasbourg, Hetzel became a leading Western Pennsylvania still life, portrait, and landscape artist in the late 19th Century. He was the founder of a colony of plein-air painters who worked in a retreat near Johnstown. These artists created dark, intimate landscapes, and patterned their painting after the Barbizon Colony in France, emphasizing the local landscape and people as subjects as well as the sense of atmosphere, deep shadows, textures and reflected light. He moved to Pittsburgh with his parents as a child and returned to Europe between 1847 and 1849 to study at Dusseldorf Academy in Germany with Carl Sohn and Rudolph Wiegman. From them, he learned strong technique, detailed drawing, and a precisely realistic style especially evident in his numerous fruit still lifes. In 1876, he was one of three Pittsburgh artists represented in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and also participated in the first International Exhibition at The Carnegie Institute in 1896 where a major retrospective of his work was held in 1909. His work is in the collections of the Mellon Family Foundation and the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art.
6,000/8,000 Sold $6,900.00
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