Sàndor Bernàth (1892-c. 1984)
Southwest Landscape in Winter
American: Mid 20th Century
Signed lower right
Watercolor on paper
13.75 x 17.5 inches, overall
$5,200

Watercolor depicting snow-covered adobe homes in the valley of a mountain range, in the American Southwest, possibly in the vicinity of Taos, New Mexico.  Taos has been an active artist's colony since the early 20th century, and a winter resort since the first ski area opened in the 1950s.  While Bernàth is particularly well-known for his New England maritime scenes, he also spent a great deal of time painting in the Southwest.  Bernàth’s style is allied with the precisionist paintings of his contemporaries, and characteristically emphasizes geometric shapes and planes of color, and demonstrates a pronounced interest in how light and shadow reveal color and three-dimensional form.  This work is emblematic of that approach: painted on rough-textured paper, the composition emphasizes the repeating rectangles of the foreground forms against the repeating triangles of the background mountains.   The late afternoon sun brightens the front of a picturesque adobe home and its turquoise door, in dramatic contrast to the deep purple shadows that fall across the snow-covered slopes.

Sàndor Bernàth was a prolific American watercolorist.  He was born in Hungary, but emigrated to America early in his career.  Bernàth developed a characteristic style of smoothly delineated forms with strong contrasts of light and shadow, which relate to the styles of his slightly older contemporaries Edward Hopper and the American Precisionist painters Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth.  He is sometimes referred to as a “student of Edward Hopper” but this likely is metaphorical rather than literal.  His later works in the 1970s (when he was in his eighties) were more painterly and atmospheric in style.   He was a member of the American Watercolor Society, and remains best known for his watercolor paintings.

Bernàth began exhibiting watercolor landscapes in New York by the early 1920s, including European and New York scenes. He was also painting seascapes of New England, including Cape Cod; an extant Bernàth work of dunes in Cape Cod is dated 1928, and one of Long Point Light, Provincetown, Cape Cod, is dated 1935. From the 1920s to 1940s he lived in Maine, although he continued to travel. He painted many views of the Maine coast, one of which was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In his mid career, Bernàth traveled to the mountainous regions of New Mexico, presumably Taos, where he painted numerous landscape watercolors featuring its snowy mountains and adobe buildings. These remain among of his most sought-after works.

Bernàth worked as an illustration artist for many New York City advertising agencies in the 1950s, and would frequently bring his pictures to sell directly to executives working at the firms for their private collections.  At that time he produced multiple works of similar images that apparently sold well, especially his yachting pictures.

Condition:  Generally very good with minor toning and wear.  Light mat burn in outer margins, can easily be rematted out.  Minor tape residue backside, top margin, where formerly hinged.