Chrysanthemums (1890)

Charles Courtney Curran prints bring sunshine, fresh air and summer colour into your home. Curran was an American Impressionist best known for his paintings of young women in white or pastel dresses, posed on breezy hilltops and among flowers at the Cragsmoor art colony in New York. Our collection of fine art prints includes his Cragsmoor scenes, garden and lotus pictures, Paris views and portraits.

About Charles Courtney Curran

Charles Courtney Curran was born on 13 February 1861 in Hartford, Kentucky, where his father taught school. The family soon moved to Ohio and settled in Sandusky on Lake Erie. In 1881 he studied at the McMicken School in Cincinnati, then moved to New York to study at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League.

His early pictures show working women at their tasks, and Breezy Day (1887) won a Hallgarten Prize in 1888. Curran and his wife Grace then spent two and a half years in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian, painted outdoors and showed three pictures at the Salon.

Back in America in 1891 he divided his time between New York and Ohio. In 1903 the family first visited the summer art colony of Cragsmoor in the Shawangunk Mountains, where they built a summer home and spent the next forty years. Curran became a leading figure there, teaching painting and helping his wife edit the colony's student publication. He died in New York City on 9 November 1942.

Style and Subjects

Curran's best-known pictures show young women in white or pale dresses standing in brilliant sunshine on rocky hilltops, with clouds and distant valleys behind them. Light, air and fabric moving in the wind are his real subjects.

He experimented with Impressionism, Symbolism, Tonalism and naturalism, painting outdoors in clear, high-keyed colour. Other favourite subjects are flowers, lotus ponds, gardens and elegant women in Paris parks.

Famous Works

• Breezy Day (1887), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A woman hanging laundry in the wind, the picture that won him a Hallgarten Prize.
• Fair Critics (1887), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Young women judging a picture, from his New York student years.
• Lotus Lilies (1888), Terra Foundation for American Art. Two women in a boat among huge lotus leaves and pink flowers.
• An Alcove in the Art Students' League (1888), Art Institute of Chicago. A quiet corner of the school where he studied.
• In the Luxembourg Garden (1889), Terra Foundation for American Art. Fashionable Parisians in the city's famous park.
• On the Heights (1909), Brooklyn Museum. Young women in white on a sunny Cragsmoor hilltop.
• The Hawk (1909), Dallas Museum of Art. Women on a summit watching a hawk in the sky.

Decorating with Curran Prints

Curran's sunny hilltop scenes are made for bright rooms: living rooms, bedrooms, sunrooms and summer houses. Their whites, pale blues and greens work beautifully with light walls, natural linen and wicker. Hollyhocks and Sunlight or The Iris Bed adds garden colour to a kitchen or breakfast nook.

The Paris garden scenes and portraits suit a dining room or hallway, and look elegant in slim gold frames.

FAQ

What art movement was Charles Courtney Curran part of?

Curran was an American Impressionist. He also experimented with Symbolism, Tonalism and naturalism.

What was the Cragsmoor art colony?

Cragsmoor was a summer art colony in the Shawangunk Mountains, about 100 miles north-west of New York City. Curran and his family summered there for forty years, and he became one of its leading figures.

What is Charles Courtney Curran known for?

He is best known for paintings of young women in white or pastel dresses posed in brilliant sunshine, often on hilltops at Cragsmoor, such as On the Heights (1909).

Where did Charles Courtney Curran study?

He studied at the McMicken School in Cincinnati, the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York, and the Académie Julian in Paris.

Where can I see Curran's paintings?

Works are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Related Artists

• Frederick Carl Frieseke: American Impressionist painter of women in sunlight
• Childe Hassam: leading American Impressionist of the same generation
• Edmund Charles Tarbell: American Impressionist painter of women in light-filled settings