Highlights

Olive Parker Black (1862 -- 1948)

19th Century Fine Art Legacy

We, at Bedford Fine Art Gallery, believe that Olive Parker Black is one of the best American women plein air painters of the 19th century. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1862. Her earliest study was with genre painter Otto Grundmann and landscape painter Frank Crowninshield at the School of Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

In the 1890s, Black went to New York City to take additional training with plein air landscape painter William Merritt Chase and genre painter Edwin Blashfield at the National Academy of Design in New York City. She also took instruction from landscape painter Hugh Bolton Jones and genre painter Henry Siddons Mowbray at the Art Students' League.

Black was known to have spent summers at South Egremont in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, and it may be that she first traveled there to take further study with Hugh Bolton Jones, her teacher from the Art Students' League. Jones had first visited the Berkshires sometime during the period between 1865 and 1876, and in 1880 he bought a cottage in South Egremont.

In 1910 Black moved from her home in Cambridge to New York City where she was "well-known in the artistic world." She exhibited and sold many of her paintings through the Rice Gallery, at one time located at 14 John Street in New York City. Rice Gallery advertised art by "Our Best American Artists," and would host a "Special Exhibition of Scenes From Nature," by Olive P. Black.

She painted many landscapes "from nature" during her summer stays in Egremont. Stylistically, her landscapes are a beautiful blend of the styles of the Barbizon School, a style espoused by Hugh Bolton Jones, and the Impressionists with the looser brushwork and a higher keyed palette, that she learned from William Merritt Chase -- but, most importantly, she developed a style distinctly her own.

With her palette and her skill, Black was able to capture the true feeling and color of nature. A common element in her paintings is a stream traversing through meadow often flowing out of the frame to points beyond us, the viewer. Her handling of water with the reflections of the sky and the adjacent scenery was unequaled by her peers.

She was a member of the National Association of Women Artists; Painters, Sculptors; New York Society of painters; American Artists Professional League and the Boston Art Students Association (Copley Society in Boston). Black exhibited at the National Academy of Design (1897 to 1930); Boston Art Club; the Art Club of Philadelphia; the Carnegie Institute; American Artists Professional League; Boston Art Club/Copley Society of Boston; National Association of Women Artists, Painters, Sculptors; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and Vose Galleries (Boston).

Use only with permission of Bedford Fine Art Gallery.

References:

  1. American Art News 1906-01-13: Vol 4 Iss 14.
  2. Falk, Peter, ed., 1999, Who Was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison, CT.
  3. https://newspaperarchive.com/new-york-tribune-may-13-1906-p-89/.
  4. https://newspaperarchive.com/new-york-tribune-dec-17-1905-p-19/.
  5. www.vosegalleries.com/artists/olive-parker-black.
  6. www.mfordcreech.com/.

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