작품 상세

ROBERT WILLIAM VONNOH (American, 1858-1933) At the Helm (Edward Dale Toland), circa 1926 Oil on canvas 41-1/2 x 33-1/2 inches (105.4 x 85.1 cm) Signed lower left: Vonnoh PROVENANCE: Sale: Phillips, Son and Neale, New York, January 27, 1983, lot 106; Walter Knestrick, Nashville, Tennessee; Sale: Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers, Saint Louis, Missouri, June 25, 2005, lot 220; Sale: Leland Little Auctions, Hillsborough, North Carolina, September 19, 2009, lot 151; Private collection, New York, acquired from the above. EXHIBITED: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "One-Hundred and Twenty-Second Annual Exhibition," 1927, no. 46. A native of Philadelphia, where artist Robert Vonnoh spent much of his career, Edward "Ned" Dale Toland (1886-1964) was a distinguished soldier, civic leader, sportsman, and longtime professor at the elite St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. Toland studied as a boy at St. Paul's before graduating from Princeton University in 1908. He then worked for a gas company in Philadelphia and for a small business in Kentucky before volunteering in 1914 as a stretcher-bearer in the French Army and, after the outbreak of WW I in 1917, as a commander of the 64th U.S. Infantry, stationed in France. Toland's illustrious tenure at St. Paul's began following the War; here, he first taught French for ten years and then history, acting as department chairman until his retirement in 1945. Interested in local politics, Toland served as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1924-26, as state chairman of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment from 1931-33, and as state commander of the American Veterans Association. In the present work, Vonnoh shows Toland engaged in sailing, one of his favorite pastimes.