Carl Hirschberg

(1854-1923)

Carl Hirschberg engineered a miraculous change from a late 19th-century, highly academic genre painter to an early 20th-century Impressionist. By 1915, Hirschberg and his artist son George L. Nelson settled in Kent, Connecticut, to become early and influential members of the Kent Art Association and the broader Litchfield County group of painters. This vividly painted plein-air floral image shows how thoroughly and successfully Hirschberg made the transition from one century to the next. This picture was most certainly painted in the Kent area circa 1918 or 1919. I acquired it in 2001 from a Shannon auction. It was through the work and book by Robert Austin entitled Artists of the Litchfield Hills that I became more aware of artists such as Hirschberg, Nelson, and Nisbet. It is fun and provides new opportunities when a previously underexplored school of artists gets its due attention.