Following a year-long honeymoon spent exploring France and Italy, the Wendels relocated to Philena’s ancestral homestead in Ipswich, where the village and the family’s Lower and Upper Farms on Argilla Road would serve as the artist’s personal version of Giverny for the latter part of his career.

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Many of these paintings show the day-to-day activity of a working farmstead or the salt marshes that were vital resource to the region, however Corn Sheaves on Castle Hill depicts a place closer to Ipswich Bay and just under an hour’s walk from the artist’s Lower Farm. Purchased by the Crane family in 1910, Castle Hill became the site of a grand manor house with palatial gardens, and also had valuable farmland, as it had for generations prior to the Cranes’ arrival.

Provenance:

By descent through the family of the artist

Literature:

Buckley, Laurene. Theodore Wendel: True Notes of American Impressionism (North Adams, MA: The Artist Book Foundation, 2018), Plate 38, p. 139

Exhibitions:

Bringing to Light: Theodore Wendel, Vose Galleries, Boston, October 19 – December 7, 2019