WILLIAM A. HARPER (1873 - 1910)

Untitled (French Landscape with Trees)

Oil on wood panel, circa 1907-08. 184x286 mm; 7<AF1/4>x11<AF1/4> inches. Signed in oil, lower left.

Provenance: private collection, New York.

William A. Harper likely painted this beautiful landscape on his second trip to Paris when he studied with Henry Ossawa Tanner. Works from this period revealed the influence on his art of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Like Bannister and Needham, William Harper was also born in Canada. His family moved from Cayuga to Illinois in 1885, and Harper attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1895-1901, working as a night watchman and janitor to pay for his tuition. He studied in Paris first from 1903-1905 at the Académie Julian. In 1905, the talented Harper earned the Municipal Art League's blue ribbon at the Art Institute of Chicago for nine of his paintings. Harper's career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis only a few years later at the age of 36. The Art Institute held a memorial exhibition in Harper's honor, showcasing 60 of his works. His paintings are found today in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tuskegee University and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC. Barnwell p. 157; Kennedy p. 119.