American Painting and Sculpture

CHARLES CARYL COLEMAN
(American, 1840-1928)

Passion Flowers, 1917
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Hattie Bishop Speed 1942.351

Flowers were one of Charles Caryl Coleman’s favorite themes. Often working on a monumental scale, Coleman would place highly abstract arrangements of dogwood or apple blossoms, wisteria, or, as seen here, passion flowers, into highly detailed frames that gave his fragile subjects the weight of architectural ornament. Coleman often incorporated objects from his enormous collection of antiques into these works, from Pompeian oil lamps and Persian tiles to Italian maiolica pottery as seen in this painting.

Coleman first studied art with the painter William Beard in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. After traveling to Paris and Florence, Coleman joined the Union Army in 1863. A year later his jaw was shattered when a fellow officer accidentally fired his revolver, and Coleman was discharged from the army. In poor health, he returned first to New York and then to Italy, where he settled permanently. After his marriage to a British musician ended in separation, Coleman built a villa on the island of Capri. He lived there in self-imposed exile from 1888 until his death forty years later.