Edward Cucuel
(San Francisco 1875–1951 Pasadena)
Schöne Herbsttage (Beautiful autumn days), 1930s, signed Cucuel, titled, signed on the stretcher, old label with artist name and title, oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm, framed
The authenticity was confirmed by Bernd Dürr, Munich, 21 March 2024 (email).

We are grateful to Bernd Dürr for the support in cataloguing the painting.

Provenance:
Private Collection, South Germany

The protagonist sits on the shore of a lake engrossed in a book, in her white dress, with white stockings and shoes and a light blue striped waistcoat, her Florentine hat decorated with delicate pink flowers beside her on the table. It is a sunny autumn day, and the green and golden-brown leaves of the trees form waves in the wind above her head.

“The depiction of a pretty and lightly dressed woman, a lady [...], was just an opportunity for him to let the play of light and colour take full effect.” (F.v. Ostini, Der Maler Edward Cucuel, Zurich/Vienna/Leipzig 1924, p. 39ff.) The appeal of Edward Cucuel’s paintings lies in their palpable lightness and nonchalant sophistication. The staging of the models blurs the boundary between pose and unobserved spontaneity. Cucuel began his light-filled plein-air painting as early as 1911, spending the summer months in the Chiemgau region and devoting himself to the motifs of bathers and women in nature. He later moved to Lake Starnberg, where he bought a villa with extensive lakeside grounds. The present work was likely created on Lake Starnberg in the 1930s. Cucuel’s paintings allow us to breathe in the golden warmth of summer, the refreshing coolness of the water and the fragrant greenery of the surrounding landscape, giving us a sense of the melancholy elegance of a bygone Belle Epoque. This almost physical immediacy is what makes his works so special.