Lot 10: Property of a midwestern gentleman GEORGE CURTIS (1826-1881) polar sea signed "Geo. Curtis"

(lower left) oil on canvas 151/8 x 26 in. (38.4 x 66 cm) painted circa 1867 In 1867 George Curtis began to paint and exhibit what would become an important series of images of the polar regions. While employed at the Boston Museum, Curits would become involved with the production of The Sea of Ice, a play based on Elisha Kent Kane~dq~s Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, ~dq~54, ~dq~55. The immediacy and strength of this series would suggest more than a peripheral knowledge of the subject, and evidence of a polar trip such as ones made by his contemporaries Frederic Church and William Bradford would appear likely. Arctic subjects by Curtis would be widely exhibited during the next decade throughout the United States and on one occasion at the Montreal Art Association. Paintings fitting this description such as polar sea, the cathedral iceberg, and the iceberg found critical acclaim in the press and continued to be popular throughout the remainder of his career. Executed at a time when Curtis was well into a body of work that is increasingly luminist in style, polar sea embodies the hallmarks of his understanding of light, atmosphere and American sensitivities to the natural world.