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Dennis Miller Bunker - The Brook at Medfield, 1889

Dennis Miller Bunker (Garden City, New York, 1861 - 1890, Boston)

The Brook at Medfield, 1889

Oil on canvas , 62 x 76 cm (24 7/16 x 29 15/16 in.)

Commentary


During the summer of 1889, Bunker painted this landscape in Medfield, Massachusetts, a pastoral retreat southwest of Boston. The previous year he and his friend John Singer Sargent had experimented with Impressionism in England, both under the influence of Claude Monet. When Bunker returned to Boston, he continued with the style—working outdoors and using a bright palette applied in short brushstrokes. The fields and streams of Medfield reminded Bunker of the English countryside, and like Monet with his haystacks, he was inspired to document the same landscape over the course of one season. He wrote to Isabella, “How fast too the Summer is slipping by us!  Everything goes at such a pace—there is even a hint of autumn stealing into my parti-colored canvases, tho'  I try to keep them in their Summer garb….”





Isabella bought the painting in November—one of the only Impressionist paintings in her collection.