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Provenance:
Private collection, Arlington, Virginia
References:
Peter Hastings Falk, Who was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, 1985
Emmanuel Bénézit, Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, Paris: Grund Publishing, 1999
Gail Sherman Corbett was a well-known sculptor, painter, and medalist who flourished as an artist in New York during the early decades of the 20th century. Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1872, she attended the local high school and later the Anne Brown School in New York City. Corbett began her formal artistic training at the Art Students League in Manhattan, where she studied with the famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the painters Henry Siddons Mowbray, a celebrated muralist, and George deForest Brush, a painter of colorful genre scenes. Later, she traveled to Paris and enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts from 1898-99. During her sojourn in Paris, Corbett was exposed to the work of the Impressionists, from whom she incorporated a looser brushwork, lighter palette, and interest in contemporary urban scenes. Sherman married in 1905, and thereafter focused primarily on monumental sculpture in bronze and memorial medals. She received many awards and acclaim for her sculpture, including both an honorable mention and a bronze medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. The present work Paris Street Scene was most likely painted during the artist’s time in Paris. The contemporary subject matter, fluid brushwork, and light-infused palette reflect the influence of the Impressionists on the artist’s early painting style. Corbett was a member of the National Sculpture Society, the Architectural League of New York, and the National Association of Women Artists.
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