Louis Mark
American Artist ( 1867-1935)
'The Secret Garden'
Oil on canvas
26.5 x 20.5 in.
$7,200
Bibliography:
Edan Milton Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940, 1989.
Born in Hungary, Mark studied painting at the Academie des Beaux Arts in Paris under the acclaimed academic painters Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury. Upon his arrival to the U.S., he was commissioned to do a number of portraits for members of the wealthy social elite between 1910 and 1922 He maintained a studio the Hotel Saint Francis in San Francisco, and exhibited much of his work there. Mark continued to paint in Santa Barbara, Washington D.C. and New York before returning to his native Hungary.
Mark’s painting was strongly influenced by his European academic training in his usage of energetic brushwork and richly impastoed dabs of color which serve to integrate the figure in its setting and evoke the texture of the greenery. His rhythmical, gestural brushstrokes add vibrancy and spontaneity to the densely painted pictorial surface, and his brilliant use of stark white pigment seems to emanate light from within the composition.