ALSON CLARK (1876-1949)
$100,000
Provenance
Estate of the ArtistPetersen Galleries, Beverly Hills, California (as 'October Bouquet')
with George Stern Fine Art, West Hollywood, California (as 'October Bouquet')
Heritage Auctions, Beverly Hills, California, Art Signature Auction, March 20, 2012, lot 87023
Private Collection, California, acquired from the above
Literature
Jean Stern, Alson S. Clark, Beverly Hills, CA, 1983, p. 79, no. 33 (illustrated)The composition unfolds across a gently rolling landscape animated by the brilliance of early autumn. Trees blaze with saturated yellows, oranges, and soft reds, their foliage rendered in broken, impressionistic strokes against a clear, luminous blue sky. Clark’s confident handling of paint allows color to carry form, creating a sense of depth through overlapping passages. Small grazing cattle dot the hillside, providing scale and a quiet note of pastoral life that anchors the composition without interrupting its chromatic rhythm.
Clark was celebrated for his ability to fuse American landscape painting with lessons drawn from European Impressionism, and this work exemplifies that synthesis. The surface remains lively and tactile, with visible brushwork that conveys movement and atmosphere while maintaining compositional harmony. Autumn, St. Lawrence River reflects not only the artist’s mastery of color and light, but also the assured vision of a painter fully at ease with his subject, transforming a specific place and moment into a timeless expression of seasonal abundance.

