Robert Moesle

(American, born 1932)

VENETIAN VEDUTE, 1998

Gouache on Paper

14¼ x 17¾ Inches

Signed Lower Left, "Moesle"

Additionally Titled "Waiting Gondolier", Dated March 1998 and Signed Verso

Framed Dimensions: 22.5 H x 26 W x 1.13 D Inches

 

A substantial and finely detailed watercolor showing a lone gondolier standing in one of a row of gondolas beneath a lilac evening sky, with a view across the lagoon towards the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the church of Santa Maria della Salute.

 

Born in 1932, Robert Moesle first studied painting at San Jose State and, subsequently, at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, England. During his student years in England, he traveled widely in Europe and was particularly influenced by the Spanish masters in Madrid's Prado museum where he made line-drawings that he would work up into paintings at his summer home in Costa Brava. In 1965, Moesle returned to Northern California for four years where he began to exhibit at various San Francisco galleries, the Triton Museum in San Jose and at the Monterey Museum of Art where he also taught a popular class on painting in watercolor. In 1969, Moesle and his French wife returned to France, settling in the Loire valley where they bought an old farmhouse that they still occupy. He began to send his paintings back to be exhibited at The Perry House Gallery in Monterey where a series of one-man shows met with great success. Since 1989, Moesle has exhibited at Zantman Galleries in Carmel and Palm Desert. This fine example of the artist's work is notable for its luminous clarity and exceptional detail. The painting was included in the 1988 exhibition of Robert Moesle's work at the San Jose Museum of Art and is also the subject of a full-page illustration in "Robert Moesle: The European Watercolors" (Mascom, 1992), a first-edition copy of which accompanies this painting.

 

Reference:

"40 Watercolorists and How They Work" by Susan E. Meyer, Watson-Guptill Publications; et al.