Painting

Thus his goal as an artist was to paint his own aesthetic vision of creation. His guides were his own intuition and reason along with his deeply rooted Christian faith. In Ducks in the Studio Schmitt reveals the influence of the Impressionists and the Pointillists by adopting their bright and pure colors. However, he chose not to paint with small dots but rather through small strokes and layers of color that built form and endowed substance and solidity to his figures and shapes. His adaption of different colors and the flattening of his canvas through the elimination of shadows resulted in a new lyricism. In our example the light falls equally and evenly across the surface of the canvas. Schmitt explained:

All art is born in lyricism, begins in color and must never lose its lyrical impulse no matter how far sustained.

Schmitt continued to search into the mysteries of painting and the arts throughout his career, maintaining his good humor and acute intellect through years of debilitating and crushing poverty.

According to the Schmitt Foundation, animals of any kind were a unique subject for Schmitt's still lifes suggesting this painting may have been a tribute by Schmitt to his teacher at the National Academy of Design, the eminent still life master Emil Carlsen. Carlsen did a number of still lifes with this subject, similar in content if not in design to Schmitt's work. Also, 1972 was the 40th anniversary of Carlsen's death.

Acquired directly from the artist by

Private Collection, Newtown, Connecticut, 1973

34th Exhibit of Wilton Artists, Wilton CT., June 1978

Wilton Library Association annual exhibition, CT, October 1987