Morgan Colt

Provenance:
Beacon Hill Fine Art, New York, New York.
Jordan Volpe Gallery, New York, New York.
Private Collection, New York.

Exhibited:
Allentown, Pennsylvania, Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania School of Landscape Painting: An Original American Impressionism, September 16 - November 25, 1984 (and traveling to Corcoran Museum, December 14, 1984- February 10, 1985; Westmoreland, March 2 - May 5, 1985; Brandywine Museum, June 1 - September 2, 1985).
New York, Beacon Hill Fine Art, An American Tradition: The Pennsylvania Impressionists, November 24, 1995 - February 1996, p. 12, illus. (and traveling to Westmoreland Museum of Fine Art, April 13 - July 13, 1997; Florence Griswold Museum, October 5 - November 30, 1997; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, December 14, 1997 - February 22, 1998; Gibbes Museum of Art, March 28 - May 10, 1998; Woodmere Museum of Art, June 6 - August 15, 1998).

Literature:
William H. Gerdts, Erika Jaeger Smith, and Sylvia Yount, Pennsylvania Impressionism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 105, no. 14, illus.

Lot Essay:
Morgan Colt, a versatile artist and craftsman, began his career as an architect before transitioning to painting. After settling in New Hope in 1912, he transformed a former studio into a captivating Tudor country house–his so-called Gothic Shops. While health limitations prevented him from painting en plein air–as was the habit of many of his contemporaries–Colt excelled in studio work, drawing inspiration from the work of Impressionist, Claude Monet. Haystacks, executed shortly after his arrival in New Hope, evinces a restrained palette and a delicate, almost "misty" atmosphere, reflecting the influence of the New Hope School, particularly the work of his friend, William Langson Lathrop. Despite producing a limited body of work due to his untimely death in 1926, Colt, here, demonstrates a thorough assimilation of French and regionalist Impressionist principles, ultimately interpreting color and light amid the rural environs of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.