Mathias Alten (German/American 1871-1938)

Signed: M. Alten (Lower, Right)

" Autumn Landscape ", c. 1934

26" x 32"

Oil on Canvas 

Housed in a 3 1/4" Frame

Overall Size: 32" x 38"

This painting is included in the Mathias J. Alten Catalogue Raisonne as number CR.MJA.643

German-born American artist Mathias Joseph Alten (1871-1938) immigrated to the United States in 1889 at the age of seventeen. His family settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a premier furniture manufacturing center and a desirable location for immigrants in the late nineteenth century. Here, amidst a rapidly changing world, Alten went on to establish a family, home, and studio for the entirety of his career.

Like many American painters of the period, Alten was drawn to the major artistic and cultural centers of Europe and the United States. Beginning in 1898 and continuing over the next four decades, he traveled extensively to pursue artistic training, exhibit his work, and engage with fellow artists. Despite his attraction to foreign communities, Alten kept his professional home in the same city and state that welcomed his family during the late nineteenth century. As a result, his work was influenced by the landscapes and techniques he discovered abroad, but he also remained deeply connected to the rural Michigan landscape widely featured in his paintings.

Over his career, Alten created more than 3,000 works of art, initially influenced by the Barbizon and Hague Schools and later by the Impressionism movement. He repeatedly sought out and celebrated traditional laborers and nostalgic settings even as modernization transformed life in the early twentieth-century.