Charles Heberer
Among Spring Blossoms (Tending the Flock)
Charles Heberer
American, 1868 - 1951
Oil on Canvas
16 x 13 in. (40.6 x 33.0 cm)
A young shepherdess cradles a lamb as her flock grazes around her in a flowering orchard meadow, a cluster of village houses visible in the soft distance. The gentle pastoral subject and luminous, blossom-dappled light reflect the French rural genre painting Heberer absorbed during his years studying and exhibiting in Paris, applied here with the tender, sentimental touch typical of his figure work.
Why it matters: Shepherdess and pastoral genre scenes were a favored subject among French-trained American Impressionists of Heberer's generation, and this intimate, smaller-format canvas shows the same Paris-honed sensibility as his larger figural Salon subjects — a gentler, more domestic counterpart to the fashionable outdoor genre scenes for which he's best known.
Charles Heberer (1868–1951)
Born in St. Louis in 1868, Charles Heberer began his artistic training at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, where the faculty included Carl Gutherz and Mary Fairchild (later Mrs. Frederick MacMonnies). Like several of his St. Louis contemporaries, Heberer went on to study in Paris, enrolling at the Académie Julian, and achieved enough early success to exhibit at the Paris Salon between 1890 and 1895. He became known primarily for genre and figure painting — fashionable young women and shepherdesses in outdoor settings, portraits, and later in his career, sporting scenes of dogs — rendered in a lightened, Impressionist-influenced palette typical of American artists trained in France at the turn of the century. Heberer's work today is held in private collections and continues to perform well at auction, with notable results for both his figural genre scenes and animal subjects.
Why it matters: Shepherdess and pastoral genre scenes were a favored subject among French-trained American Impressionists of Heberer's generation, and this intimate, smaller-format canvas shows the same Paris-honed sensibility as his larger figural Salon subjects — a gentler, more domestic counterpart to the fashionable outdoor genre scenes for which he's best known.
Charles Heberer (1868–1951)
Born in St. Louis in 1868, Charles Heberer began his artistic training at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, where the faculty included Carl Gutherz and Mary Fairchild (later Mrs. Frederick MacMonnies). Like several of his St. Louis contemporaries, Heberer went on to study in Paris, enrolling at the Académie Julian, and achieved enough early success to exhibit at the Paris Salon between 1890 and 1895. He became known primarily for genre and figure painting — fashionable young women and shepherdesses in outdoor settings, portraits, and later in his career, sporting scenes of dogs — rendered in a lightened, Impressionist-influenced palette typical of American artists trained in France at the turn of the century. Heberer's work today is held in private collections and continues to perform well at auction, with notable results for both his figural genre scenes and animal subjects.
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