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PAUL SAWYIER
(American, 1865-1917)
Tanglewood
Watercolor on paper
11 ¾ x 18 ¾”
Bequest of John William Pruett, Jr.: The John William Pruett, Jr. Collection 1993.9.10

Dubbed ‘The River Artist’ by the Louisville Courier-Journal, Paul Sawyier spent much of his childhood in Frankfort, Kentucky, and from 1884 to 1889, he studied art formally with Thomas Noble at the Cincinnati Art School. In 1889 and 1890, he attended the Art Students League in New York City, where he was under the tutelage of American Impressionist William Merritt Chase. The following year, after returning to his native Kentucky, Sawyier continued his artistic education with Chase’s former student Frank Duveneck, who had recently opened a teaching studio in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Known primarily for landscape paintings in watercolor, including Tanglewood, Sawyier worked mainly in the vicinity of Frankfort, where he captured river scenes and images of covered bridges. In particular, he favored views of the Kentucky and Dix rivers and scenes along the Elkhorn and Benson creeks. He spent the years 1908 to 1913 painting Kentucky river scenes from his houseboat, which he kept moored at High Bridge in Jessamine County. Sawyier aimed to render the effects of light and atmosphere through a modified impressionistic style. His preliminary sketches made en plein air, or out-of-doors, were subsequently finished in the studio, where he often consulted photographs to render details of these Kentucky scenes that had since changed or disappeared.