Superb original gouache painting of a winter landscape by noted American architect, artist and landscape painter, Lawrence Buck (1865-1929).

Work measures 11 x 9 inches (image size). On a 14 1/4 x 11 3/4 backing board.

Medium: gouache

Signed lower right

Condition: Very good condition. Mild scuffs/scratch/edge-wear. Backing board with some soiling/wear. Please see photos.

Provenance: a Long Beach, California estate

About the artist: Buck was a member of a group of young progressive Chicago architects sometimes referred to as "The Eighteen", who were friends and colleagues of Frank Lloyd Wright, Dwight Perkins, Robert C. Spencer, and others, who had offices in Steinway Hall. Buck maintained an office in Steinway Hall from 1902 through the 1920s.

Buck worked both prior to and contemporaneously with the Prairie School architects and his work at times resembles theirs, but it is not limited to the Prairie Style aesthetic. He drew on a wide range of forms to create simple yet dignified buildings that have tremendous appeal, whether in a simplified Tudor, Arts and Crafts, English cottage, Prairie Style or Colonial revival mode. For example, his 1909 house for Mrs. Helen Campbell in Palo Alto is designed in a modified Dutch Colonial style. Architect Hermann V. von Holst featured a number of noteworthy houses by Buck in his books surveying the work of Chicago area architects, as did fellow architect and architectural writer Charles E. White. For von Holst, Buck created "Studies of Different Exterior Treatments of the Same Plan" showing variations that are Colonial, English Country, Italian Revival, Jacobean Revival and Georgian Revival.

Beautiful magazines published homes which Buck designed; architects and builders in many parts of the country used these plans liberally.

Buck marketed and sold plans for his buildings which were then constructed in other parts of the country, such as the Campbell House in Palo Alto, California, and the Nelson Bonny House in Norwich, New York. Buck collaborated with women designers in his residential work, notably Elizabeth Eleanor D'Arcy Gaw (1868-1944) and Mary Mower who created interiors in the Arts and Crafts mode for his clients between 1901 and 1903. They formed what they called "The Crafters" group which was first located at 1013 Steinway Hall in Chicago, which also housed several of the Prairie School architects.

From 1907 to 1911, Buck worked in partnership with Edwin Besançon Clarke, an 1891 graduate of the University of Illinois. Some architectural historians speculate that Buck may have had a second office in Rockford, Illinois, during this decade as there are at least ten houses in Rockford that have been identified as his work.

Buck was a member of the Arts Club of Chicago, North Shore Art League, and Ravinia Sketch Club. Buck died on August 17, 1929, in Ravinia, Illinois.