Patrick Henry Bruce Sold at Auction Prices

Still life painter, Landscape painter, Porträtmaler, Painter, b. 1881 - d. 1936

(b 1881; d 1936) One of the pioneers of American modernism, Patrick Henry Bruce was part of a circle of American artists who gathered around Gertrude and Leo Stein and Henri Matisse in Paris at the end of the 20th century’s first decade. Those relationships, together with his own intensive study of Cezanne’s late paintings, led to a style of art in which Bruce explored the implications both of Matisse’s color and of Cezanne’s space. Later in his career, he began experimenting with abstract still-lifes composed of geometric shapes, which he created using mechanical tools such as a compass and scale. Bruce’s art was largely ignored during his lifetime however and he eventually gave up painting, destroying much of his own work, before taking his own life in 1936.