Executed at the height of his career, Yellow Tulips exemplifies Frederick Carl Frieseke's goals of creating a perfectly balanced and pleasing composition. Frieseke's home in Giverny, the setting for a number of his finest pictures, is depicted here with dazzling color and vitality. The sunlight that shines through the windows provides an opportunity to show the play of light and shadow with consummate Impressionist technique. In this work Frieseke has chosen one of his favorite conventions, a female subject clothed in an elegant fabric. Her placement in the composition is novel, however, and perhaps unique in the artist's work: the model, his wife Sadie, is painted as a reflection in a mirror. Below the mirror, arranged on a mantlepiece, are porcelain objects of virtu--and the yellow tulips which lend the painting its name.
Frieseke's interest in sunlight began in Giverny, and remained with him throughout his career. Indeed, one of the principle subjects of Yellow Tulips is the light which pervades every corner of the composition. In a 1914 interview he elaborates on this hallmark of his art, which amounts to an adoration of the sensuous possibilities of sunlight: "It is sunshine, flowers in sunshine, girls in sunshine, the nude in sunshine, which I have principally been interested in for eight years and if I could only reproduce it exactly as I see I would be satisfied." (E. B. Neff, American Painters in the Age of Impressionism, Houston, Texas, 1994, p. 119) Expanding on the theme of flower painting in particular, he adds that "my idea is to reproduce flowers in sunlight...to produce the effect of vibration, completing as I go... If you are looking at a mass of flowers in the sunlight out of doors you see a sparkle of spots of different colors; then paint them in that way... One should never forget that seeing and producing an effect of nature is not a matter of intellect but of feeling... The effect of impressionism in general has been to open the eyes of the public to see not only sun and light, but the realization that there are new truths in nature." (C.T. MacChesney, "Frieseke Tells Some of the Secrets of His Art," New York Times, June 7, 1914)
The figure's dress, the chairs, windows and hanging fabrics all provide further opportunities to add pattern to the composition. William H. Gerdts has noted that "it was Frieseke who introduced into the repertory of Giverny painting the concern for rich, decorative patterns, related to the art of Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and the other Nabi painters. There are patterns of furniture, patterns of parasols, patterns of fabric and wall coverings, patterns of light and shade, and patterns of flowers, all played off one another in bright sunshine...." (Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, New York, 1993, p. 172) All of Frieseke's artistic devices come together in this work to form a highly successful, complete, composed and balanced composition.
Frieseke first settled in Giverny following a summer spent there in 1900. Among the Americans who established themselves in Giverny, Frieseke lived and worked in the town the longest, remaining for nearly two decades. By 1906, the artist had moved into the former house of the American painter, Theodore Robinson, who lived next to Claude Monet. The intricate and extravagant garden of the French Impressionist painter had a significant impact on Frieseke, and Frieseke's home also had a "beautiful old garden, running riot with flowers." (Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, p. 172) This blending of an American Impressionist style with typically French subjects resulted in Frieseke's prominence at home and abroad; the March 1932 issue of Art Digest called him "the most internationally renowned American artist."
Painted about 1911-12, Yellow Tulips exemplifies the best of Frieseke's early work. It was during the years between 1906 and 1919 that Frieseke painted some of his most remarkable canvases. As B. L. Summerford wrote in an essay on the artist, "there is a thrilling quality to the early paintings. They have the vitality of youth, the feeling that anything is possible...In many ways they are among his finest and freest conceptions, direct, forceful, confident and economical." (A Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of F. C. Frieseke, San Francisco, California, 1982, p. 17) Because of its importance, Frieseke exhibited Yellow Tulips twice, first in 1917 and 1918 at museums in Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, and secondly in 1921 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under the title Yellow Tulips--The Mirror. A major rediscovery, Yellow Tulips is a signature example of the artist's finest impressionist masterworks.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonn of Frieseke's work being compiled by Nicholas Kilmer, the artist's grandson.
