Walt Kuhn

Though the cityscape of New York was among the first subjects painted by Walt Kuhn in the early years of the twentieth century, the natural landscape of the wider United States soon emerged as an enduring interest in both his paintings and drawings. Famously reticent when asked to discuss his own work, Kuhn nevertheless reveals a great deal about his landscape sensibility in a letter of 1929 to a young painter: "Use less material in your subject matter, a single tree, a rock or a bit of earth, with the sky behind it. Try for a bigger range of light and dark...There are always dark crevices among rocks, and tree crotches. In other words, keep away from fogginess" (Perlman 1989, p. 18) In "Rocky Mountain Stream", Kuhn brilliantly illustrates these aesthetic tenets, evoking the tranquil rhythms of a backwoods stream through the shimmering contrasts of his simplified black and white palette. Throughout the 1930s, Kuhn would explore the visual plenitude to be found within the limits of black and white alone, contained on a standard sheet size 19 by 24 inches. The result was a body of Kuhn's most nuanced and poetic landscape vignettes, among which "Rocky Mountain Stream" stands as an exemplar. "Rocky Mountain Stream" was exhibited at the influential Marie Harriman Gallery in New York in 1936, where Kuhn showed regularly from 1930 to 1942. Though the tastemaker Harriman exhibited the full range of Kuhn's output in both group and solo exhibitions, she expressed a unique interest in his landscapes, mounting numerous exhibitions dedicated exclusively to his drawings in that genre. Kuhn produced a significant body of landscape paintings throughout his career, and "Rocky Mountain Stream"-conceived independently-stands equally among them in its lyrical intimation of the solitude of nature. -Rory O'Dea, 2009. Works cited: Bennard B. Perlman, Walt Kuhn, 1877-1949 (New York: Midtown Galleries 1989).