Oil on Wood Panel, Valley Village, Early 20th Century

Period
Early 20th century

Size
12¼ x 15½ inches, unframed

An oil on wood panel, with an illegible pencil signature to the verso.

A valley with a town in it, seen from above, the grain of the panel reading through the paint in the sky and hills.

There is a chip and loss to the panel at the upper left corner and along the top edge, edge wear and small losses around the perimeter, and surface abrasion with a few scratches through the paint. Sold unframed.

Historical Context
Panels were the plein air support: rigid, light, cheap, and needing no stretching, which is what a painter working outdoors wanted. Wood panels are also the older choice, standard from the nineteenth century into the early twentieth, where the commercially embossed canvas-textured board that replaced them is a twentieth-century product.