ALLAN ROHAN CRITE (1910 - 2007)
Untitled (Study for Sunlight and Shadow)..

Watercolor, pen and ink on wove paper, mounted to illustration board, 1940. 280x380 mm; 11x15 inches. Signed, initialed and dated "Aug. 1940" in ink, lower right.

Provenance; private collection, Boston; thence by descent, private collection (2010).

This charming watercolor by Allan Rohan Crite is a scarce and significant example of a large 1940s watercolor and a study for an oil painting. The watercolor is a preparatory work for Crite's 1941 oil painting Sunlight and Shadow in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. This early composition has a number of notable differences in the grouping and figures included. It depicts a group of three generations, a gathering of women and children, in Madison Park in Boston's South End. The title refers to the dappled sunlight through the shady trees; the artist's interest in light is more apparent in the later oil painting.