Diary Comments:
“Painted in 1935. A painting with an unusual history! The first
painting I made following my disastrous fire in 1934 (after which I didn’t
paint for just a year, while I made over the Buckland house and studio.) A
very superb picture of my loved Halifax house, and half of the main house
with gable and all the tumbled down ell (before restored) with sunlight and
shade on the building with giant elm and maples before it and a foreground
of uncut grass, daisies, buttercups, devil’s paint brush etc. A grand
expression of old, fading N. E! Hearing during the winter 1934-5 that a N.Y.
woman had bought “my” Halifax House and that I was to meet her there July
1st, I made this my first painting when I again took up my work, hoping to
sell it to her. Went to meet her July 1st taking the new canvas. She bought
it for $650 on the spot! Mrs. E. Sherman Harris, “Cedar Ledges”, Wappingers
Falls, N. Y. She bought several chalk drawings later and tried to give me
the house and whole farm, after she had restored it, which I refused to
accept! After she had had the canvas for 6 years and been keen about it, she
gave it back, unattached, to me because she felt, after our war was declared
that the Germans were going to bomb her district about West Point first, and
thus would destroy the painting! Hence at the date of this writing I again
own the painting! (Dec. 1946). Bought by Grand Central Art Galleries of N.
Y. for the 1954 Founders Exhibition April, 1954.”
Comment on the back of a sepia print:
“An old red house in Halifax, Vt. with magnificent elms and maples guarding
it. Have painted this house many times. Mrs. Kohl owns a smaller painting of
the front of the house.
Notes:
The Manchester (Vt} Journal. August 29, 1940
."...The Grace o f Age, (name later changed to
The Grace of Years) an old worse-for-wear New England farm home,
is the subject, resting peacefully beneath large trees in the warm sun."
Came up for auction at Skinner Inc. on 9/11/92 but was not sold. Low
estimate was $2,000. High estimate was $2,500.
Sold at auction by Young Fine Arts, North Berwick, Maine, on
Sept. 18, 1993 for $2,500.
Click here for a
provenance on the Halifax house click here.
