oil on canvas, 50,5 cm x 70,5 cm, signed, signed on verso, titled, partially minimally craquelure, minimally spotted, partly retouched
Edward Cucuel was born the son of a French newspaper publisher. Therefore, not only was his first career path as an illustrator obvious, but also his further artistic training in France. After the American-born artist attended the art academy in San Francisco, he also studied in Paris at the prestigious Académie Julian, the Académie Colarossi and the state Académie des Beaux-Arts. Essential to his artistic work was not only the study of the "Old Masters" in Italy and France, but also journeys to Spain, Algeria, as well as faraway Ceylon, Japan and China. Until he finally joined the artists' association "Die Scholle" in Munich. To counter the then "Munich painter prince" Franz von Lenbach, the artists' group formulated the following statement in the magazine "Jugend - Münchner illustrierte Wochenschrift für Kunst und Leben": "[. The 'Scholle' has no other common goal, no other route, than that everyone cultivates his own 'Scholle', which admittedly cannot be found on any map." The other artists' circle at Chiemsee at the time - within which he met his second wife Clara Lotte von Marcard (1897-1968) - certainly influenced the artist as well. For example, the open-air painting of the Tyrolean artist Leo Pütz, as well as the proximity to Impressionist painting, can be recognised in the contemplative and at the same time atmospheric painting "Am Meeresstrand". Here Cucuel painted a girl by the sea. Dressed in a summery dress and hat, she stands barefoot on the beach. It is precisely through the depiction of the repoussoir figure - with her back turned to us as the viewer - and her gaze into the distance that it touches us in a longing sense. We can almost put ourselves in the young woman's place, feel the wind on our skin, taste the salty sea and feel the cool wet ground. The finely placed reflections in the water and the light waves compose the motif with the high-set horizon and structure the picture just as the beach section does. During the First World War Cucuel painted in Holzhausen am Ammersee, then in Munich and Starnberg. In 1939 he settled in Pasadena (California), where he lived until his death in 1954.
