Water's Edge, Giverny, France - Masterpiece Jigsaw Puzzle
Karl Albert Buehr (American 1866-1952)
Laurel Ink puzzles measure 18" x 24" 500 pieces.
Retail $12.95

Water's Edge, Giverny, France (from back of puzzle box)
Karl Albert Buehr (American 1866-1952)

American art in the decades prior to the Civil War concentrated on defining a national identity among artist. Throughout the mid nineteenth century, artists such as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church conveyed a patriotic message though a realistic style of painting. During the 1860's, the panoramic pastoral and wilderness scenes that had been rendered in the patriotic air seemed outdated. These young artists sought to break free from aesthetic tradition by becoming more directly linked to international trends.

Paris was the common hub for artist such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, who were reveling against the tradition of academic art. In the 1870's and 1880's, this group of artist (labeled "Impressionists") received hostile responses from the Parisian art critics who considered their work loose, unpolished and sketch-like.

The French Impressionists were first inspired to paint outdoors in an attempt to capture the transformations taking place in their urban environment. This new approach to painting led to the Impressionists to scrutinize the effects of light and color on an entirely new level. Soon, their concentration was fixed on capturing the quality of atmospheric light, the reflections affecting the object, and the juxtaposition of colors. Many American artists were inspired by the French Impressionists' new outlook, which challenged traditional methods and developed a new way of looking at their world.

Karl Albert Buehr is certainly one of America's most talented artists. Like his contemporaries, he favored working in outdoor settings. He captured the vitality of plein-air scenes with vibrant color and contrasting texture. Born in Germany in 1866, Buehr immigrated to America to pursue an education at The Art Institute of Chicago. He further studied at the Academie Julian in Paris and at the London School of Art, and then continued his education in Holland. Buehr was greatly influenced during the time he spend in Giverny, France, where he became well-acquainted with the works of Monet and other French Impressionists.

Buehr painted Waters's Edge, Giverny, France sometime between 1090 and 1911, during the height of his career. Water's Edge is one of Buehr's most complete compositions. His landscape backgrounds were often secondary in his composition but, in this painting, Buehr devotes as much attention to the water, trees and flowers s he does to the central female figure. By the early 1900's, while Monet was devoting himself only to landscape painting, Buehr and many of hiw contemporaries were concentrating on depicting female figures in lush settings. In Water's Edge, Buehr shows his capacity for capturing the female model, and the effects of light and color in a landscape setting.

New: packaged/shrink wrapped 14"x14" boxed.

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