Jean Crawford Adams
American, 1884 - 1972Lake Geneva, 1929
Not on view
Oil on board
Dimensions16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Gift of Pat Glascock and Michael D. Hall in memory of Harry Butler, Inlander Collection, 2003.19
This painting depicts the shoreline of a popular resort lake in southeast Wisconsin. Born in Chicago in 1884, Jean Crawford Adams studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, living and working in the city all her life. She also traveled frequently in the United States and abroad. She was a member of the Chicago Society of Artists and another group of artists known as the 10 Artists (Chicago). Adams is recognized as one of the first generation of Chicago painters to embrace Post-Impressionism. In the 1920s, Adams's work became bold and graphic, with a color palette similar to the Fauvists. Building her images from patterns of unblended paint strokes, Adams created a personal style of expression that uniquely enriched American Scene painting in the Great Lakes region. The subjects Adams favored in her art reflect her life in the Midwest. Her fascination with place led her to paint numerous landscape views of rural Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. She once stated that she sought to identify and artistically transform "the currents of power which may be spiritualized and transmuted into art."
