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.)
This horizontal oil painting is a landscape predominantly painted in green. In the foreground are pale green grasses, some dotted with yellow flowers. In the center, at the very bottom of the canvas, a reddish butterfly rests on one of the flowers. In the lower corner to your left is a view of the brook mentioned in the title. Although you get just a small glimpse of the water, you do get a sense of its movement toward your right and up into the center mid-ground of the canvas, where you get another peek of water. Grasses and plants in shades of green dominate the center of the canvas. Moving into the background, shades of coral and purple are added to the palate. In the background, tall bushes in darker shades of green line the canvas from left to right. A small section of sky can be seen in the top corner to your right. The painting is signed and dated in the lower corner to your right, D.M. Bunker, 1889.
Blue Room
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.