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Karl Buehr’s Woman with Parasols shows a seated woman in a state of languid rest, her eyes closed in a tranquil moment balanced by cool and warm tones. While the environment she inhabits remains undefined, the pink blush of her cheek and the sunshade behind her suggest a warm, sunlit day. The white and blue coverings draped around her lend her a goddess-like form, with the parasol encircling her head like a halo. Buehr was first exposed to Impressionism when he enrolled in night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1888. His later stay in Europe from 1906 to 1913, financed by Buehr’s patron and former president of the Chicago Women’s Club, Lydia Coonly Ward (1845-1924), allowed him to join the American artist community in Giverny by 1910. He painted alongside fellow Chicagoans Louis Ritman (1889-1963) and Lawton Parker (1868-1954), as well as Frederick Frieseke (1874-1939) and Richard E. Miller (1875-1943). It was in this environment, the sunlit landscape made famous by Claude Monet (1840-1926), that Buehr developed his ability to capture light and atmosphere. Painting women with parasols was common among the Giverny group, influenced by Monet’s earlier works like Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son and remnants of the craze for Japanese art and design that was sparked among the French Impressionists like Monet, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), and Edgar Degas (1834-1917), in the late 19th-century. The group often shared settings and props (the same pale green table and chairs is portrayed in several paintings by Buehr, Miller, and Frieseke), but three similar paintings of women and children at tea by Ritman, Miller, and Buehr, suggest the artists also likely participated in plein-air studies during their time in Giverny. The three paintings show a woman in a lilac dress pouring tea at the green garden table, each painting featuring the same bright yellow, red, and green, prominent parasol behind them. The compositions highlight a key element in impressionist painting, the subjective nature of capturing the essence of a moment in time.
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