Charles Krutch (Tennessee, 1849-1934) East Tennessee atmospheric oil on canvas laid on board painting depicting a Winter/Spring mountain landscape in the Great Smoky Mountains, rendered in muted tones of gray, green, and brown. Housed in a textured wood frame with linen mat. Signed "Krutch" lower right in red. Sight: 11 3/4" H x 17 1/2" W. Framed: 16 3/4" H x 22 3/4" W. Biography (Courtesy Knoxville Museum of Art): Charles Christian Krutch is regarded as one of East Tennessee’s first painters to specialize in scenes of the Smoky Mountains. He earned the nickname “Corot of the South” for his soft, atmospheric watercolor and oil landscape paintings of the mountain range. Totally untrained as an artist, he often applied thick layers of oil paint with brushes as well as his fingers. Krutch’s goal was to capture the changing “moods” of the mountains and regarded his subjects as “just like people.” He won a regional award for best watercolor at the 1913 National Conservation Exposition in Knoxville. However, it was not until 1933, a year before his death, that the 84 year-old artist received recognition outside Knoxville for his idyllic mountain landscape murals commissioned by the federal government as part of the Public Works Art Project.

Overall very good condition. 1" x 1/4" retouch to scratch, lower right. Faint 6" L scuff from mountaintops into sky, upper left.