AN AUCTION SALE OF PART OF A LARGE COLLECTION OF WORKS OF ART EXECUTED BY AUGUST HERMAN OLSON ROLLE (MINNESOTA/WASHINGTON, D.C. 1875-1941), WASHINGTON, D.C.’S MOST IMPORTANT AND BEST IMPRESSIONIST LANDSCAPE ARTIST OF THE EARLY 20^TH CENTURY, WHICH ARE FROM THE ARTIST'S ESTATE, WHICH MR. FASTOV PURCHASED IN THE 1970'S FROM COLONEL AUGUST GOODYEAR, ROLLE'S SON-IN-LAW

THE FOLLOWING BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH OF ROLLE, WITH MINOR MODIFICATIONS, IS TAKEN FROM THE ASKART.COM WEBSITE ON ROLLE.

August Herman Olson Rolle was Washington, D.C.’s most important and best Impressionist landscape artist of the early 20^th Century, which he manifested as his artistic style throughout his career from c. 1905 to his death in 1941. Rolle was recognized as one of the few and best exponents of Impressionism in the Southern states of America in the early 20^th Century by one of America’s leading and most prominent art scholars, Professor William Gerdts, in his impressive landmark, trail blazing book entitled American Impressionism. (1984), that is still the definitive book on this subject. This book may have been the most popular American art book published in the 20^th century. Usually most art books are published in one year with very high retail prices and within such year and/or the next year, they are remaindered by the publisher; the price of the book is slashed significantly; and the book is shipped to wholesale book dealers specializing in remaindered books. This book was first offered to the public with a price of approximately $85.00 in 1984, and it was not remaindered and its price dropped till c. 1992. Shortly thereafter, c. 1994, a cheaper paperback version of this book was published, which also had very wide sales. However, there have been subsequent reprints in hardback, which also sell well.

August Herman Olson Rolle was born to Norwegian immigrant parents on a farm in Sibley County, Minnesota on March 30, 1975 and died in Washington, D.C. on October 9, 1941. He attended Red Wing Seminary in Red Wing, Minnesota, studying business and law until 1892. He worked for the Willcox Lumber Company of Lake Park, Minnesota, before he “remembered the Maine” and joined the US Army in June, 1898. Rolle served during the Spanish-American War with the 3rd U.S. Infantry at Fort Snelling, Minnesota and fought in a small police action against the Chippewa tribe. Rolle’s earliest known work is a fine sanguine sketch of a seated young soldier holding a rifle at Fort Snelling. He married Anna Ebeltoft and had a daughter, Maxine, in 1902. He came to D.C. in 1900, where he joined the U.S. Department of Interior and, in 1904, the US Bureau of the Census, where he ultimately headed the Forest Products Division, supervising approximately 40 employees. He is credited by the Norwegian Society of Washington, D.C. in its records with being its founder in 1902 and was elected its first President.

Rolle started his formal art training at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (1905-1915) with, among other teachers, E. H. Messer, J. H. Moser and Richard N. Brooke. The Barbizon landscapes of the Frenchman, J. B. C. Corot (examples were in the Corcoran collection) and his rural upbringing were Rolle’s inspiration for painting views of the Potomac River Valley and other fields, farms, trees, rivers, streams and other landscapes of the D.C. area, which he rendered in Impressionist, spontaneous, gentle, imaginatively-colored, pastel-hued works of art for 35 years, until his death in 1941, in a manner that was equal to the best American Impressionist landscape painters.

Rolle is an important American Impressionist, particularly when it comes to landscape painting. His work is very similar in coloring, composition and technique to that of Edward Redfield, who was made a member of the Landscape Club of Washington, D.C., c. 1920, when Rolle was its President, even though Redfield was a resident of Pennsylvania. They had the same love of spontaneous on-site sketching and painting of beautiful landscapes and water views, the difference being that Redfield painted primarily in the Delaware River Valley and the environs of New Hope, Pennsylvania, while Rolle focused on the Potomac River Valley, D. C. and the adjacent rural areas of Maryland and Virginia.

Rolle is one of the very few Southern and D.C. artists, who espoused and practiced Impressionism in the early 20th Century. Impressionism was not a popular Southern art form, because art tastes remained conservative in the South, which retained its love of Barbizon-style landscape painting and photo-realistic genre painting, that came into fashion in the second half of the 19th Century. Indeed, the newspapers, which only published photos in black and white and not in color, were unable to convey to the art loving public the most beautiful and strongest characteristics of Impressionism, high key and pastel colors and the beauty of the sophisticated flowing, loose brushwork, often bathed in subtle light reflections, as the newspaper photos portrayed Impressionist works as having a sort of mushy, blurred paint strokes and did not convey the nuanced pictorialization of light and its subtle shadings. In addition, D.C. attracted artists, illustrators and engravers, who created precise, realist works for U.S. government agencies, such as the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and the U.S. Department of Interior, and artists who specialized in realistic portraiture of the US government officials and the D.C. business elite. Thus, Rolle was truly a rara avis as a D.C. and Southern practitioner of landscape Impressionism.

In his definitive American Impressionism (1984), Professor William Gerdts, discussed approximately 350 American Impressionists of the very late 19th and early 20th Centuries and others affiliated or interested in American Impressionism and illustrated in color only 204 Impressionist paintings. Gerdts discussed the Impressionists active in various regions in the U.S., including the South (pp. 201-261). He concluded (p. 240): “For reasons that are not yet clear, Southern artists seldom experimented with Impressionism, nor were collectors in the area attracted to it; and Northern artists who worked in the South rarely were of an Impressionist persuasion.” Rolle was one of 12 Southern Impressionist artist exceptions found by Professor Gerdts, which he discussed at pp. 240-243, 6 of whom, including Rolle, he illustrated in color in those pages. Thus, a Rolle work of art was illustrated in American Impressionism in color, along with other American Impressionist artists from all of the regions of the country, as well as the artists of national repute, such as Childe Hassam and Mary Cassatt, of the approximate total of 350 American Impressionist artists that Professor Gerdts discussed in American Impressionism. At p. 240, Professor Gerdts observed that Rolle’s Brunswick, Maryland is painted in a fairly orthodox Impressionist style.” Rolle’s “Early Spring Good Hope Hill [ D.C.]” is illustrated in color as plate 305 at p. 240, in American Impressionism. Professor Gerdts discussed only 12 practitioners of Southern Impressionism, illustrating in color works by 6 of these artists, Rolle, Benson Bond Moore (also of D.C., and a very close friend of Rolle), Gari Melchers (Virginia), Kate Freeman Clark (Mississippi) and Julian Onderdonk and Granville Redmond (Texas) As noted above, at p. 240 of American Impressionism, Professor Gerdts observed that Rolle’s Brunswick, Maryland [1]“is painted in a fairly orthodox Impressionist style.”

In his comprehensive 3 volume (1214 pages in the aggregate), Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting (1990), Professor Gerdts examined in some detail the art and artists of each state from colonial times through the early 20th Century. In Volume I, dealing with the eastern and mid-Atlantic states, Rolle is one of 21 major District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.) artists that Professor Gerdts selected, analyzed in depth and illustrated. In effect, Gerdts selected Rolle out of approximately 2,700 artists active in D.C. during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.[2] Professor Gerdts illustrated Rolle’s painting “Wharf Leonardtown, Maryland” in a full page illustration at Volume I, p. 363. At p. 364, Professor Gerdts characterized Rolle as a “first-rate landscape painter” and observed: “Wharf, Leonardtown, Maryland, a scene at the mouth of the Potomac River, is painted with a high key colorism unusual for him; many of his finest works are winter scenes with paint laid on in a more architectonic manner, reflecting the aesthetic of the Pennsylvania Impressionists, particularly Edward Willis Redfield. Indeed, Rolle devoted himself to the Potomac River Valley with much the same enthusiasm that Redfield did to the Delaware River. (Emphasis added.).” Indeed, what Redfield accomplished in and did for the Delaware River valley, Rolle accomplished in and did for the Potomac River Valley.

Rolle was a vital force in and much respected member of DC art circles in the early 20th Century. He played prominent roles in the D.C. art organizations, which, on May 20, 1932, William Henry Holmes characterized as the “three principal art societies” of Washington, D.C.: the Landscape Club of Washington, D.C., the Washington Watercolor Club and the Society of Washington Artists.[3] Rolle was one of the founders of the Landscape Club, which traces its roots to 1913; became known as the “Ramblers” c. 1916; and will shortly celebrate its 100th anniversary as the Washington Society of Landscape Painters this year, 2013.[4] Rolle was elected the first President of the Landscape Club in 1919, and each year thereafter, through 1932, with the exception of 1925, and was the major dynamic figure in the Club. Many male members[5] of the Club, which was devoted to outdoor sketching and painting of the D.C. area and the Potomac Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains and their environs, would go on painting expeditions virtually every weekend. In those days, the close-in areas, such Rock Creek, Sligo Creek and the Anacostia River, and the beautiful rural vistas, including parts Alexandria, Virginia and Bethesda and Rockville, Maryland, and some of the idyllic settings on the Potomac and its tributaries could be easily reached in a relatively short time, with newly extended trolley lines and the relatively recent invention, the automobile. Weekend painting trips were also made to more distant places, such as Waterford, VA, Harper’s Ferry, WV, the Blue Ridge Mountains and Solomons Island and Ocean City, MD. By 1927, the Club’s membership had swelled to 39 members (limited to 40 male members in 1928, per its Constitution). Among the more noted members of the Club during the early 20th Century were William Henry Holmes,[6] Garnet Jex,[7] Lucien Powell and Benson Bond Moore,[8] all of whom were close friends of Rolle.[9] In addition, other notable artists, such as Winfield Scott Clime, R. Bruce Horsefall, Charles Bittinger and Eliot O’Hara were members at various times, as was Edward Redfield of Pennsylvania.

Rolle, who was also an excellent, innovative watercolorist, succeeded William Henry Holmes as President (1914-1930) of the Washington Water Color Club, being elected each year from 1931 through 1937. Rolle’s watercolor skill, technique and style have been carefully examined in some detail and praised along with 5 other of the most prominent members of the Water Color Club from 1890-1936.[10]In 1940, Rolle was elected Vice-President, Society of Washington Artists, having been elected Secretary in 1920 and serving on its Executive Committee in 1922, 1925-1927, 1931-1939. Rolle was a member and Chairman of the Arts Committee and of the Board of Governors of the Washington Arts Club, founded in 1916, which became a D.C. cultural mecca in the relatively barren desert of the sleepy Southern city of Washington, D.C.[11] He was also a member of the Society of Washington Etchers, the Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers and the American Federation of Arts. Rolle first appears in the artist’s biographical directory of the American Art Annual in 1912.

In The Capital Image: Painters in Washington, 1800-1915, a catalogue for an exhibition of the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art (1983-1984), Andrew J. Consentino and Henry H. Glassie stated (p. 239): “The most distinguished landscapists of the second generation [of the Washington, D.C. landscape school] were August H. O. Rolle (a key member of the Landscape Club), Edgar Hewitt Nye, and Hobart Nichols. Rolle and Nye, as can be seen in their Winter, Rock Creek Park and Rock Creek, Early Summer, respectively (Figs. 157 and 158), subscribed to Cezanne’s style, but with differences….Rolle employed Cezanne’s architectonics, but adopted a palette of lavenders and other complex colors that originated with Gauguin and which found favor with the painters of the Delaware and Brandywine schools. Rolle’s paintings ranked along with those of Elmer Schofield and Edward Redfield. (Emphasis added.).”

Rolle exhibited at many museums, art galleries and other venues throughout the U.S., even though he exhibited mostly in the D.C. area and the South. Among other D.C. public venues, Rolle exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery Of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Arts Club. These were the only real public art venues available to Rolle for exhibition in D.C. at this time, when D.C. was still a relatively sleepy Southern town, and the Smithsonian Museum empire and other present day D.C. area museums did not exist. He was unable to attain national recognition and fame, as he devoted his entire career to practicing and promoting Impressionism in D.C. and the South, where Impressionism was not accepted. Thus, Rolle did not attain the national fame of the D.C. area artists, who left D.C. for New York and New England, such as Hobart Nichols and Winfield Scott Clime. Nonetheless, Rolle was, as Gerdts stated, a “first-rate landscape painter;” his “paintings ranked along with those of Elmer Schofield and Edward Redfield,” per Consentino and Glassie; and he was a major Southern Impressionist during his approximately 35 year career, which ended with his death on October 9, 1941. Even at the end of his career, he remained well-cherished by the Washington art critics.[12]

Per askart.com, Rolle's works are in the collections of Corcoran Gallery Of Art, U. S. Library of Congress, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Arts Club Of Washington (in excess of 50 works of art), The Historical Society Of Washington D.C., (approximately 10 works of art), all of Washington, D.C., the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, and the Calvert Marine Museum, Solomons, Maryland.

In 1992, Mr. Fastov put on an Exhibition of 108 of Rolle's works of art; some Rolle memorabilia and 2 portraits of Rolle by other Washington, D.C. artists, Herbert Francis Clark and W. Bowyer Pain. Such exhibition was entitled The Seascapes and Waterviews of August H. O. Rolle held at the Calvert Marine Museum, Solomons, Maryland on June 20-October 20, 1992. Mr. Fastov wrote the accompanying Exhibition Catalogue by the same name, a copy of which will be given to a purchaser of any Rolle work of art at this auction.

Sources:
Fastov, Robert S. The Seascapes and Waterviews of August H. O. Rolle. Exhibition Catalogue Calvert Marine Museum June 20-October 20, 1992.

Rolle family records and documents.

Newspaper files of the Washington Star and Washington Post.

Smithsonian Museum of American Art and Corcoran Gallery of Art vertical files and collections of exhibition catalogues, brochures and press clippings.

Arts Club of Washington scrapbooks.

Norwegian Society of Washington, D.C. documents.

U.S. Government Archives (military career and employment)

Who's Who in American Art

American Art Annual

Scrapbook by Garnet Jex, long-time member of the Landscape Club of Washington, D.C.

AUCTION AND MARKET VALUE OF ROLLE'S ART

Rolle works of art have not appeared at auction frequently from 1989 to the present. Among the better Rolle sales results for oil paintings are, as follows. Sloans Auctioneers, Bethesda, MD (now this auction house, Sloans & Kenyon) sold “Autumn Rock Creek” (19” x 23”) for $9,075 on 5/12/1991 as lot 2547.

Weschler's Auctioneers & Appraisers, Washington, D.C. sold “Rock Creek, Summer” (16” x 17”) for $4,510 on 5/12/1990 as lot 147.

Weschler's Auctioneers & Appraisers, also sold “Breaking clouds” (11” x 14”) for $1,870 on 10/14/1989 as lot 145 (Photographic Image Not Available) and “Summer Landscape” (12” x 16”) for $2,212 on 10/14/1989 as lot 128.

Almost all Rolle oil paintings sold post 1998 to the present have been small paintings, 8” x 10” or smaller, all of which Rolle created as plein air sketches, some of which he turned into major oil paintings. Skinners Inc., Marlborough, Massachusetts, sold “Winter Landscape” (9 7/8” x 11 3/4”) for $2,070 on 11/10/2000 as lot 124.

Cobbs Auctioneers, Peterborough, New Hampshire, sold “Morning Buzzards Point” (6 ½” x 8 ½”) for $1,725 on 4/23/05 as lot 248.

The Potomack Company, Alexandria, Virginia, sold “Houseboats on the Potomac” (7 ½” x 9 ½”) for $1,000 on 4/28/2007 as lot 75;

Also, “Boats On The River” (7 ½” x 9 ½”) for $1,100 on 4/28/2007 as lot 76.

Sloans, Bethesda sold “Autumn” (14” x 16”) for $1725 on 10/27/2000 as lot 562;

also “Sunset” (4.70” x 6.50”) for $700 on 5/07/2004 as lot 1691.

Weschler’s sold “Winter Forest” (8” x 10”) for $1,100 on 4/17/2010 as lot 592.

As to Rolle's watercolors only a relatively small Rolle watercolor, “Sligo Creek in Winter,” (11” x 15”) sold for $825 on 5/12/1990 as lot 142 at Weschler’s.

Weschler's also offered “Atmospheric Landscape” (6.50” x 9.50”), which was estimated at $500-$700 as lot 657, but failed to sell on 12/1/2007.

No other Rolle watercolors and no Rolle prints or drawings were offered for auction sale between 1989 to the present, per Askart.com.

As to Mr. Fastov's art sales, they have been relatively few in number, given the fact that he has owned Rolle's large estate for approximately 40 years. He has made relatively little effort to sell Rolle's paintings. However, one 8” x 10” Rolle oil painting sold for $10,000 and a number of paintings this size and smaller have been sold for between $3,000 and $8,000. Slightly larger Rolle paintings in the 11” x 14” and 12” x 16” range have sold for between $7000 and $18,000. Rolle oil paintings that are 16” x 20” have sold in the $20,000 price range. No larger Rolle painting has been sold from Mr. Fastov’s collection of Rolle paintings. However, Mr. Fastov has turned down offers in the past of $35,000-$60,000 for some of the larger paintings being offered at this auction. A significant number of the oil paintings offered in this sale are large, finished paintings executed by Rolle, almost invariably based on small sketches, like the one’s auctioned above, most of which have brought between $1,000 and $2,000 at auction, and, in most instances, do not approach the quality of the smaller Rolle paintings offered in this sale. As to Rolle watercolors and drawings, very small Rolle watercolors and drawings of 5” x 9” range and below have commanded between $500 and $1,000, and the largest Rolle watercolors in the range of 14” x 20” have been sold for $3,000 or well in excess thereof. Three of Rolle's prints, which are in the collection of the U.S. Library of Congress, have each been sold in the $500-$700 range.

Rolle's Impressionist landscapes are equal to the Impressionistic style, composition, coloring, technique and wide variety of landscape subjects of Edward Redfield, the leader of the Delaware Valley-New Hope school of landscape Impressionist painting, who was also became a member of the Landscape Club of Washington, D.C., c. 1920. As noted above, Rolle was one of the founders and was elected President of the Club each year from its formal inception in 1919 through 1932, with the exception of 1925, and was the major dynamic figure in the Club. Through his friendship with William Henry Holmes, whose primary medium was watercolor, not oil paint, Rolle became more and more interested in painting watercolors. Given his high status and respect with the Washington, D.C. artist community, it is not surprising that Rolle succeeded William Henry Holmes as President (1914-1930) of the Washington Water Color Club, being elected each year from 1931 through 1937. As noted above: In 1940, Rolle was elected Vice-President, Society of Washington Artists, having been elected Secretary in 1920 and serving on its Executive Committee in 1922, 1925-1927, 1931-1939. Rolle was a member and Chairman of the Arts Committee and of the Board of Governors of the Washington Arts Club, which was a D.C. cultural mecca, founded in 1916. He was also a member of the Society of Washington Etchers, the Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers and the American Federation of Arts. Rolle first appears in the artist’s biographical directory of the American Art Annual in 1912.

Per Askart.com, the highest price paid for a Redfield painting was $996,000 on 5/18/2005. Larger Redfield paintings have frequently brought in excess of $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 and $700,000 and smaller, but not the smallest often exceed $50,000 and $100,000. As stated previously, Gerdts noted “Indeed, Rolle devoted himself to the Potomac River Valley with much the same enthusiasm that Redfield did to the Delaware River.” The pre-sale estimates of these Rolle paintings do not come close to matching Redfield’s estimates and sales prices, but are readily commensurate and appropriate for Rolle, who was the leading, foremost and most gifted D.C. area exponent of the Impressionist landscape in Washington, D.C. and one of only 12 Southern Impressionist artists included in American Impressionism. (1984), by one of America’s leading and most prominent art scholars, William Professor Gerdts, which was his very impressive trail blazing and definitive book on this subject and remains so today. Of these 12 Southern Impressionist artists, Professor Gerdts only presented in this book, color photographs of 6 of these artists, including Rolle. Thus, a Rolle work of art was illustrated in color along with 203 other paintings from artists of all regions of the country, as well as the Impressionist artists of national repute, such as Childe Hassam and Mary Cassatt, of the approximate total of 350 American Impressionist artists that Professor Gerdts discussed in this book. That Rolle work of art, “Early Spring, Good Hope Hill (D.C.),” which Professor Gerdts included as a color plate 305 in American Impressionism is being offered for sale in this auction, as well as Rolle's “Wharf, Leonardtown, Maryland,” which was included as a full page color illustration in Volume I, p. 363, as color plate 1.358, in Professor Gerdts comprehensive 3 volume Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting (1990).

All of the Rolle works of art offered in this sale are in the same excellent, untouched condition (except for a significant number, which were cleaned), as in 1941, the year of his death, and make for excellent artistic/esthetic purchases and investments. The discriminating art collector, investor and lover of American Impressionist painting, and those who are interested in acquiring relatively rare high quality Rolle art, produced by THE leading Washington, D.C. practitioner and exponent of Impressionist landscapes, and also a leading exponent and practitioner of the Southern Impressionist landscapes, should consider availing him or herself of the opportunity to acquire one or more of these excellent Impressionist paintings, watercolors, drawings/sketches and prints by August Herman Olson Rolle, almost all of which are being offered for sale for the first time since Rolle’s estate was acquired by Mr. Fastov during the 1970's.

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[1] Gerdts viewed this painting at “Washington on the Potomac,” an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1982.

[2] See the approximately 2,700 DC artists profiled in the late Virgil MacMahan's “The Artists of Washington, D.C. 1796-1996,” and pp. 185-186 for Rolle’s biographical write up and a photograph of Rolle’s painting “The U.S. Capital With The Bartholdi Fountain (and figures) In The Foreground,” which is being offered at this auction under Rolle's title “An Old Sketch Of The Capital,” c. 1925-1930.

[3] See memorandum, dated May 20, 1932, of William Henry Holmes, one of D.C.’s great artists and the first Director of the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art in the vertical files, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, its successor.

[4] As discussed in the catalogue entry below for Rolle’s “Wharf, Leonardtown, Maryland,” the Washington Society of Landscape Painters will be celebrating its 100^th Anniversary with an art exhibition during April 2013 at the Arts Club of Washington, in its headquarters in the James Monroe house, in which “Wharf, Leonardtown, Maryland,” will be exhibited and featured and will be illustrated on the front cover of the exhibition catalogue, because of Rolle’s significant role as a founding member of the group that became the Landscape Club and long-time first President and true leader thereof in the 1920’s. In 1986, the Club became the Washington Society of Landscape Painters.

[5] The Washington Society of Landscape Painters relatively recently admitted women as members in 1993. The Society’s history as set forth on wslp.com and states: “It is not known when the Club's first constitution became effective, but in 1928 a document presented as a revision of the constitution appeared in the historical record. Of particular note is Article III which stated: “The membership shall consist of active and honorary artist members, all men, the active membership to be limited to 40.” The rationale for excluding women is said to have been centered on the rigors of painting on location and the difficulty of traipsing over the rugged countryside, which were deemed too arduous for the fairer sex.” A variant of the foregoing statement was published in a Landscape Club statement issued c. 1928. In assessing what today would be considered a sexist statement, it should be borne in mind that, to the best of Mr. Fastov’s recollection, every extant photograph of the Landscape Club male members on a weekend painting trip to the hinterlands of or painting in Washington, D.C., in rustic landscape settings in the teens and twenties, depicts them all wearing formal business suits, some with vests, which reflects the conservative mores of the time and is not inconsistent with this sexist policy position, which put women on a pedestal and as being entitled to male protection from the rigors of painting in the “rough,” great outdoors. The Society currently has 40 members, per the 1928 Constitution. Mr. Fastov was selected by the Society members to a attend a dinner in 1993 at the Washington Arts Club and to be the main dinner speaker to present a talk on the history of the Landscape Club to help the Club mark its 80^th anniversary. The Society of Landscape painters notes on its website that: “Among the early Ramblers were August H. O. Rolle and Benson Bond Moore, who would later become prominent in Washington art circles,” and that “Rolle's very substantial influence on the course of Club activities continued for many years. Except for the year 1925, he was the Club's president from 1919 to 1932.”

[6] At Christmas, 1928, Holmes sent Rolle an exquisite, sophisticated watercolor study of a young African-American male, on the verso of which Holmes stated: “To A. H. O. Rolle with Holiday Greetings from W. H. Holmes—‘He is black but that is no matter.’ 1928.” This study was exhibited as “A Black Youth” as No. 126 in The Capital Image: Painters in Washington, 1800-1915), an exhibition held at the National Museum of American Art (1983-1984). This Holmes’ watercolor is being offered for sale in Mr. Fastov’s collection of American and Canadian Art.

[7] In a letter dated August 20, 1965, to Maxine Rolle Goodyear, Rolle’s daughter, Garnet Jex wrote: “For 15 years, as a junior member of the Landscape Club, Mr. Rolle was a real friend and counselor, and it was privilege to serve as secretary for 7 years while he was President. He gave the Club guidance and stability which perhaps it has lacked since then. I believe his chief personal characteristic was sincerity; next, a regard for other people. He had an innate love of the out-of-doors, and a keen awareness of it color, light, and form of things. He had respect, too, for paint as a medium to record what he saw, and to express what he thought.”

[8] Moore taught Rolle print making. They held a November, 1924 joint print exhibition at Venable’s, a D.C. Gallery. They painted each other’s portraits, which Mr. Fastov owns. Moore and Rolle often went on Landscape Club weekend painting trips to sites farther outside the D.C. environs to places like Harper’s Ferry, WV and Solomon’s Island, MD.

[9] See notes 6, 7 and 8 above. The author was advised of Rolle’s relationship and friendship with these artists by Colonel August Goodyear, spouse of Maxine, Rolle’s daughter, in conversations in the 1970’s.

[10] See Marilyn Benjamin “The Influence of Traditional and Innovative Watercolor Techniques on the Washington Watercolor Club Between 1890-1936,” a thesis submitted to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, George Washington University on May 6, 1979. Benjamin assessed Rolle’s watercolor style, technique and body of work, along with that of 5 other most prominent members of the Club from 1890-1936.

[11] Lectures, concerts, art exhibitions, cultural talks and member musicals, sketches, dances and dinners were key functions at the Arts Club at the James Monroe 4-story, double width Georgian house. When the Arts Club was founded, the only art museum and non-commercial exhibition space was the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

[12] On October 12, 1941, 3 days after Rolle died, Ada Rainey stated in a Washington Star Arts Club exhibition review, without manifesting her knowledge of Rolle's very recent death: “Sand Dunes, Ocean City, Md.’ by A. H.O. Rolle has a subtle sense of the beauty of the swirl of the sand along the coast. It shows the sensitive observation of the artist in a most delightful manner. Rolle has always been sensitive to the quiet or serene beauty of nature in her poetic moods.” This painting is being offered for sale as catalogue entry No. 89.