Window Shopping
Signed lower right: J. JEFFREY GRANT
Description
Schooled in the European academic tradition, James Jeffrey Grant brought to his canvasses an intelligent and disciplined feeling for design, form, and color, all elements on display in Window Shopping. The scene capturing visitors to a neighborhood store cannot be specifically located, yet it radiates with a sense of small-town charm found in both his views of Cape Ann and in his depictions of Midwest villages closer to home. Flanked by a market on the left and what is likely a café on the right, the white clapboard building serves a dual purpose as a place of business and a residence, perhaps for the proprietor themselves, thus exemplifying the old practice of living over the shop.
Provenance
By descent through the artist’s family to private collection, San Diego, California
Inscriptions
Labels
Exhibitions
Literature
Condition
Good. The painting was cleaned and lined with BEVA onto a hard support in 2017 by a California conservator, who also mounted the stretchers to the back of the heavy support and put a loose canvas between the board and stretchers for appearance only. There is minor old in-paint in the far-left trees and an area in the sky upper right. More recently, our conservator in-painted minor losses that the previous conservator overlooked, specifically a few dots in the lower left quadrant, some specks in the shop’s windows and a few dashes below the woman with the green kerchief, clusters of specks in the balcony and doorway overhead, and minor dots and a thin L-shaped line in the far-right building
