Lowell Birge Harrison
Moonrise in Charleston Harbor
Oil on canvas
25 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (64.1 x 76.8 cm)
Signed lower left: Birge Harrison
Birge Harrison first visited Charleston, South Carolina, in 1908 and returned several following years to escape the harsh winters at his home in Woodstock, New York. His mesmerizing Tonalist paintings...
Birge Harrison first visited Charleston, South Carolina, in 1908 and returned several following years to escape the harsh winters at his home in Woodstock, New York. His mesmerizing Tonalist paintings inspired by the harbor, including the present work, immediately garnered praise, as the artist wrote: "The only two pictures which I painted in Charleston last winter, when exhibited with a large collection of my work were selected by a very competent jury of artists as the best in the show. I must certainly do some more of the most exquisite and beautiful effects I have seen anywhere—those that happen many times a day in Charleston harbor. You Charlestonians are so accustomed to the pearl-shell quality of your water view that it seems to you not unusual or out of the ordinary—but this is far from being the fact." (as quoted in M.R. Severens, The Charleston Renaissance, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1998, p. 50)
Provenance
Private collection;Grand Central Art Galleries, Inc., New York;
Sterling Regal Collection, New York;
Sotheby's, New York, May 25, 1988, lot 28, sold by the above;
Private collection, acquired from the above;
Christie's, New York, January 23, 2026, Collector/Connoisseur: The Max N. Berry Collections; American Art Day Sale, lot 316
Exhibitions
New York, New York Art Association, Annual Exhibition, n.d.(Possibly) Charleston, South Carolina, Gibbes Art Gallery, 1908 (as Moonlight off Charleston).
Buffalo, New York, Albright Art Gallery, 1908, no. 50.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Exhibition of Landscapes byt Birge Harrison, N.A., January 27-February 10, 1912, no. 25.
(Possibly) New York, Louis Katz Art Galleries, January 1916, no. 20 (as Moonlight off Charleston).
Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix Art Museum; New Britain, Connecticut, New Britain Museum of American Art Tonalism: An American Experience, March 13-July 11, 1982, p. 73, no. 38 (as Moonlight on Charleston Harbor).
Greenville, South Carolina, Greenville County Museum of Art, American Realist and Impressionist Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Haig Tashjian, March 10-April 22, 1984.
New York, Spanierman Gallery, LLC, The Poetic Vision: American Tonalism, November 10, 2005-January 7, 2006.
Literature
C.L. Borgmeyer, "Birge Harrison—Poet Painter," Fine Arts Journal, vol. XXIX, October 1913, p. 599.I.S. Fort, "Tonalism: An American Experience," Arts Magazine, vol. LVII, no. 4, December 1982, p. 14, illustrated.
M.R. Severens, The Charleston Renaissance, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1998, p. 51, illustrated (as Moonlight on Charleston Harbor).
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