The Herwigs
Edouard Antonin Vysekal
Premium Canvas


The Herwigs
Premium Canvas
£53.99

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  • Model:
    [10900_PCAN]
  • Artist: Edouard Antonin Vysekal

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CANVAS MATERIAL:
Our premium canvas prints are produced on a white 100% cotton canvas (410gsm) meeting the highest standards regarding density, colour gamut, colour graduation and image sharpness. Each canvas is produced using a 12 colour giclée fine art printing process and hand finished by one of the UK's most experienced canvas framing teams. Each canvas is stretched over a frame and ready to hang. Frames are made from the finest quality European kiln-dried knotless pine. Hanging kit is provided.

COATING:
All our canvas prints are finished with a matt varnish coating. This help to preserve the integrity of your canvas image, protecting against airborne dirt/dust, sun fade, abrasions and fingerprints.

CANVAS EDGE:
Mirror - We mirror the last 2 inches of the image and wrap this around the canvas. No part of the original image is lost.
• White - White edges and the image stops at the corner of the frame.
• Black - Black edges and the image stops at the corner of the frame.
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When necessary we digitally enhance the colours from the original, sometimes to restore them back to their former glory and other times to leave you with a print that pops with colour. Certain images will also be cropped and resized to fit their intended media. If you require your print to resemble the original as closely as possible then we would be more than happy to oblige. Contact our team via sales@smartfurnish.co.uk who will provide you with sample images of the original before you place your order.

 

Painting:
The Herwigs

Artist:
Edouard Antonin Vysekal

Date:
1828

In the catalogue for the Vysekal memorial exhibition held at the Los Angeles Museum in 1940, Arthur Millier declared The Herwigs to be "a landmark in the figure painting" of Southern California. During his lifetime Vysekal became best known for multifigured compositions evidencing his early academic training. He had an excellent command of anatomy and depicted his characters brimming with life, their physiques healthy and robust.

In The Herwigs he moved further from his training. Although Vysekal depicted fellow artist William K. Von Herwig and his family, the figures were only a means to exercise his interest in color abstraction. This becomes more apparent when the unusual presentation of the figures is considered: the mother sits inside on a window seat playing with the child while the father looks on from outside, his hands pressed against the window. The figures form a contemporary Holy Family: the placement of the father outside the house accords with the not uncommon practice of depicting Saint Joseph slightly apart from the Virgin and Child. The family is encircled by the Hollywood Hills, which the artist has transformed into a bright background of color and light. The child's gesture of stretching upward leads the viewer's eye toward the prismatic glass wind chime, which recalls the coloristic and formal experiments of modernist artists.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Edouard Antonin Vysekal was one of the early modernists active in Southern California. Born into a family of artists, he was introduced to art at an early age, attending the Industrial and Art Polytechnic School, Prague. After immigrating to the United States at age seventeen, he sought instruction first at the Art Institute of Saint Paul and then the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with J. H. Vanderpoel and Harry M. Walcott. He taught at the Art Institute from 1912 to 1914, when he moved to California, his wife, Luvena Buchanan Vysekal, having received a mural commission for the Hotel Barbara Worth in El Centro, California.

The Vysekals settled permanently in Southern California and immediately became active in the local art life, both exhibiting in 1919 with the modernist group the California Progressive Painters and later with the Group of Eight. Vysekal's work won acclaim from both conservative and avant-garde critics because he demonstrated in his figure and still-life paintings the ability to retain a command of draftsmanship like the old masters' while exploring the potential of abstract color and form. Vysekal exhibited regularly in the annual exhibitions of the California Art Club, the Los Angeles Museum, and the California Watercolor Society. He inspired many Southern California painters through his teaching, first at the Art Students League of Los Angeles and at the Otis Art Institute, where he taught life drawing and landscape painting from 1922 till his death.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art