John Douglas Patrick (1863-1937) American, "Ready to go Visiting", signed and dated lower right 'Patrick 1917', oil on canvas, 17.5" x 11.5"; framed 18.5" x 12".
This poor kid. There he sits, groomed and forced into his finest attire, stoically waiting to visit a relative or friend of the family he's probably never met. Like Tom Sawyer, he'd much rather be running around outside barefoot, catching frogs. But he's a brave young man, accepting his fate without complaint.
"Ready to go Visiting" is dated 1917, the same year the US entered World War I. In that context, our apprehensive young hero can be seen as a metaphor for the millions of young men marched off to the carnage of the War to End All Wars.
Titled on the reverse in red crayon. Estate stamp left side, just below the wire. Edges reinforced, mounted to a new stretcher.
America c. 1917
17.5" x 11.5"
PRICE: $1,100
John Douglas Patrick was born in Pennsylvania in 1863, the son of Scottish immigrants. In 1885 he traveled to Paris where he enrolled in the prestigious Acadamie Julian, noted for training some of America's most noted artists- John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood among them. He was accepted into the Paris Salon and showed work there in 1886 and 1887. He moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1903 where he took a position as painting instructor at the Kansas City Art Institute that lasted 32 years.
His monumental work, "Brutality", painted in 1888 and measuring 12' x 10', depicts a Parisian laborer savagely beating his draft horse, a common occurrence in the streets of Paris. Painted in response to this disturbing problem, Patrick exhibited "Brutality" at the 1889 Exhibition Universelle where it won rave reviews and a medal, one of the first of such honors ever bestowed upon an American artist. It now hangs in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.