HIGGINS, GEORGE FRANK (American, 19th Century) "Rocky Clearing." Signed and dated 88, Lower right. Oil on canvas, 14" x 22" (sight); 19" x 27" (framed). Price category: B.

A successful landscape painter during his lifetime, George Frank Higgins worked mainly in the Barbizon style that was popular in France during his day, which he adapted to the American scene. His precise dates are unknown, but he exhibited over twenty paintings at the Boston Art Club during the years 1873 to 1891 and also exhibited at the Boston Atheneum and Leonard's Auction Rooms. He lived in Massachusetts. In a review that appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript of March 18, 1874, the author noted that Higgins' work "would hold its interest...and improve by age as choice scenes in nature do to the lover of occult mysteries." Higgins is known to have painted in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, throughout New England, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, as well as in Florida. Many of his paintings are listed in the authoritative book, New Hampshire Scenery, by Catherine Campbell. This accomplished, meditative landscape "reads" effortlessly from left to right, with dark volumes stretching from the bottom to the top of the picture at left, while a footpath skirts the imposing boulders at the center, leading the eye diagonally toward the light of blue sky and white cloud at the right. The brushwork is supple and meticulous. Provenance: Skinners, Boston, May 2007. References: Catherine Campbell, New Hampshire Scenery, 1981. Peter H. Falk, Who was Who in American Art, 1999. George, Groce, The New York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564-1860. Nancy Allyn Jarzombek, The Boston Art Club, 1855-1950. Maybelle Mann, Art in Florida, 1564-1945. Robert McGrath, A Sweet Foretaste of Heaven: Artists in the White Mountains, 1830-1930. Robert Perkins, The Boston Atheneum Art Exhibition Index, 1827-1874. Museums: The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine The Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida

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