Collections record Beta

Oil on Canvas - "Berkshire Hills"

2014-3-1

Oil on canvas landscape executed in warm autumn colors. Composition shows a river running through the central images with trees covered in yellow, orange, and red leaves along the bank. A split rail fence is seen in the middle field of the painting and rolling hills are featured in the background. The canvas is signed "A. Sheldon Pennoyer" in the lower left corner. On the back of the canvas is written in the artists hand, "Berkshire Hills/ by/ A. Sheldon Pennoyer/ 114 E. (61?) St./ NYC".

This landscape is believed to be one of Pennoyer's Litchfield County scenes. It shows a very strong resemblance to two other landscapes by Pennoyer in the Litchfield Historical Society collection. Based on existing examples that have come up for sale, Pennoyer had this painting reproduced as a lithograph print.

Albert Sheldon Pennoyer was born in Oakland, California, on April 5, 1888. He studied briefly at the University of California moving to Paris in 1912 to study architecture. The following year he gave up architecture and instead took up painting and studied at the Académie Julian and Académie de la Grand Chaumiére. He returned to the United States at the onset of World War I, and served from 1917 to 1920 in the camouflage unit of the Army Corps of Engineers, and then from 1920 to 1928 in the Officers’ Reserve Corp. In 1921, Pennoyer set up a studio in New York City where he would work at regular intervals for the next thirty-eight years. Pennoyer also spent large amounts of time at his mother’s home in Litchfield, producing Connecticut landscapes in pastel and oil and multiple scenes of Litchfield, both past and present. Pennoyer served again in World War II, first with the U.S. Army Air Force and the Corps of Engineers before joining the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA, better known as the Monuments Men). Given a Leica camera, a car, and a driver, Pennoyer was involved in the repair, recovery, and documentation of cultural heritage in Italy from 1943-1945. Pennoyer assisted in the recovery and return of artwork evacuated from public collections by Italian officials and storage in safer repositories in the Tuscan countryside. His photographs document the work of the MFAA, the destruction of monuments and buildings caused by German occupation and allied bombing, and the physical and emotional toll felt by the residents.

• Pennoyer, Albert Sheldon, 1887-1957

Framed 44" x 59"; Work 35" x 50"

• oil
• canvas