Marshland
Walter Steumpfig (1914-1970) was one of Philadelphia’s most influential painters of the mid-20th century. A Philadelphia native born in Germantown, Steumpfig studied at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Henry McCarter, Daniel Garber, and Francis Speight. In 1934 he won the Cresson Travel Scholarship for study abroad and headed to Europe, where he studied his idols Poussin, Caravaggio, and Corot. He exhibited regularly at the Durlacher Brothers Gallery in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy, later becoming the Academy’s teacher of composition and drawing.
Steumpfig’s style was personal and fresh, outside the mainstream of his contemporaries. He considered himself a “romantic realist”, and was noted for his figure compositions and Philadelphia and New Jersey shore landscapes. These views, with just a few people embedded in the landscape, invoke an aura of mystery and detachment in their composition, as in the work of contemporary Edward Hopper, with whom he was frequently compared.
“Marshland” is an example of Steumpfig’s best landscape works. The composition is based on light values and structure. Bathed in the golden light of afternoon, seven boys are engaged not too seriously in activity along the riverbank, reminiscent of Poussin’s shepherds. The intensely illuminated foreground, bare torsos and bright articles of clothing, immediately engage the viewer. The immensity of the river is matched above by a sky with white clouds. On the far riverbank, the afternoon sun illuminates the spring green of the trees, and the undersides of the clouds. The poetic realism sets a mood, sending the viewer back in time to antiquity, but appears fresh, with fluid, modern brushstrokes. It is impossible not to want to join the group on the riverbank and soak in the sun’s rays.
“Marshland” bears a Maynard Walker Gallery label verso. A New York City art dealer from 1935 to 1975, Maynard Walker was among the first to show works of leading American regionalist painters. Walker is noted for organizing the 1933 exhibit in Kansas City that first brought together the works of Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood.
Today Walter Steumpfig’s works can be found in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Phillips Collection.
by: Cynthia Beech Lawrence
