Curran In The Garden of Luxembourg Painting by Paul Meijering

About "Curran In The Garden of Luxembourg Painting"

by Paul Meijering

About the artwork

Realistic acrylic painting of the American Impressionist painter Charles Courtney Curran (New York, 13 February 1861 - there, 9 November 1942), best known for his canvases featuring women in various settings, painted by the Dutch fine artist Paul Meijering - the original painting is 90 x 120 cm and part of a permanent collection.

Curran was born in February 1861 in Hartford, Kentucky, where his father taught school. A few months later, after the start of the Civil War, the family left there and returned to Ohio, eventually settling in Sandusky on the shores of Lake Erie.

Charles Curran showed an early interest and aptitude for art and went to Cincinnati to study in 1881. He stayed there for only a year before going to New York to study at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. Many of the paintings he produced during this period depicted young, attractive working-class women engaged in various tasks.

One was particularly notable: Breezy Day and won the NAD's Third Hallgarten Prize for Oils in 1888. Shortly afterwards, Curran and his young bride Grace left the United States to study in Paris, where their first child Louis was born.

After two and a half years abroad, the young family returned to the United States in June 1891. For the next decade, Curran divided his time between New York, where the couple had a flat and Curran maintained a studio, and Ohio, where they had extended family and spent most summers. In 1903, the Currans first visited the summer art colony of Cragsmoor. Located in the scenic Shawangunk Mountains, about 100 miles northwest of New York City, the spectacular scenery and native flora inspired Curran to build a summer home there. He died in New York City in 1942.