Bathers

 

George Overbury "Pop" Hart

 

c. 1922  

drypoint 

9 13/16 x 7 13/16" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

proof, from unstated edition 

exhibition stamp on verso reads "Nov 13 1928"; inscribed in lower margin in unknown hand: fine early Proof 

 

cream wove 

published 

artist 

DOSP101 

SOLD

George “Pop” Overbury Hart first painted a watercolor of this scene around 1923, when it was reproduced in the art periodical “Shadowlands,” (illust. p. 10, Edgar Cahill, “The Odyssey of George Hart,”), and it was described then as a compilation of sketches from his various travels. Hart then created this drypoint after the painting, and while a faithful rendering of the five nude figures, three goats, and geological formations, it is a stronger image, with greater contrast and a drama lent by the stark background.

Interestingly, this drypoint is usually dated 1925; however, Hart exhibited an impression of "Bathers" at the Chicago Society of Etchers exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in February-March of 1923. The locale in the image is now suspected to be (at least in part) a depiction of a brook in Englewood, New Jersey, which is now within the boundaries of Flat Rock Brook Nature Preserve, situated on the western slope of the Palisades. Hart lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey where a number of Modernist artists had a community.