ARTIST: Harry Louis Freund (Arkansas, Missouri, 1905 - 1999)
NAME: Untitled
MEDIUM: oil on canvas board
CONDITION: Missing few flakes of paint. No visible inpaint under UV light.
SIGHT SIZE: 12 x 16 inches / 30 x 40 cm
FRAME SIZE: 15 x 19 inches / 38 x 48 cm
SIGNATURE: lower right
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
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SKU#: 117553
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BIOGRAPHY:
Harry Louis Freund (1905–1999) Harry Louis Freund was a muralist who became famous for his depictions of life in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas during the 1930s. His artwork is identified with the American scene painters and muralists, such as John Stuart Curry, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton. He was instrumental in establishing art departments at two Arkansas institutions, Hendrix College and Little Rock Junior College (now University of Arkansas at Little Rock), as well as Stetson University in De Land, Florida. He and his wife, Elsie Bates Freund, founded the Summer Art School in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) and helped shape that resort town as a year-round community for artists and writers. Louis Freund was born on September 16, 1905, in Clinton, Missouri. His father died while Louis was young. He was inspired to become an artist by his mother, who painted copies of other paintings; an uncle who painted miniature portraits; and a cousin, Evelyn Sturgis. Freund attended the University of Missouri at Columbia from 1923 to 1925 and Washington University in St. Louis from 1925 to 1929. In 1929, he received the E.H. Wuerpel travel scholarship for one year of foreign travel and study; while in Paris, he studied at the Colarossi Academy and La Grande Chaumiere. Freund returned to the United States and, from 1930 to 1932, worked as a professional artist in New York City. He found work with the federally supported fine arts section of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and began competing for mural commissions. Freund traveled through the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri for months to record the vanishing culture of that area. He painted murals on post office and bank buildings in Heber Springs (Cleburne County), Pocahontas (Randolph County), Eureka Springs, Rogers (Benton County), and Harrison (Boone County), as well as in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri. Freund is said to have sent 100 paintings to Washington DC. Freund was also a draftsman, easel painter, and printmaker, and his work followed five broad themes: European landscape, American genre, protest against war, regional landscape, and Christian subject matter. Freund’s style sought for emotional impact in the use of dramatic heavy outlines, somber colors, and compositions with strong diagonal axis. His style in the beginning was light and illustrative and seemed more adventuristic in terms of expression, whereas his later works followed great traditions in artistic styles. As in early Renaissance painting, Freund tended to compress time and space elements in order to capture everything in a cohesive moment—an ability useful in mural painting.