Alfred H. Maurer: Aestheticism to modernism, 1897--1916

This dissertation represents the first concentrated scholarly assessment of Alfred H. Maurer's early and mid career. It serves as a repository of information about the artist's production between the years 1897 and 1916, during which time Maurer made the transition from nineteenth-century figurative artist to twentieth-century vanguard modernist. Organized in catalogue raisonné-like fashion, this study offers the most comprehensive assemblage of Maurer's early paintings, among them many previously unknown works. It offers a coherent narrative of Maurer's imagery within the matrix of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century art historical developments. It does so by discussing the aesthetic currents in which Maurer operated and by exploring the artistic, cultural, and historical issues that framed the production of his art from 1897–1916. During this time Maurer created a dynamic body of work that bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and spanned a period stretching from Aestheticism to modernism. He launched his career with elegant fin-de-siécle figure studies that garnered critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic and rose to prominence as a cosmopolitan painter of genteel female subjects. While creating paintings in this vein, Maurer also produced captivating genre portrayals of contemporary life executed in a Realist mode. Although he demonstrated great facility working in these two aesthetics, and was perfectly poised for continued success, Maurer abandoned his more traditional work to chart a modernist course. By 1907 Maurer had begun to make seminal contributions to American modernism, a field that was then in its embryonic stages. As this dissertation demonstrates, he went on to become one of the earliest American artists to embrace the promise of vanguard art. He emerged as arguably the most accomplished American to create Fauve work. Maurer played an active role in the cross-fertilization of modern art between France and America, and he served as an important link between New York and Paris art circles, furnishing his fellow countrymen with invaluable first-hand knowledge of pre-World War I Parisian art.