The Intruder is a rare surviving oil on canvas American Impressionist painting created in 1921 by Arthur Prince Spear. This underwater sea nymph scene was exhibited that year at Boston’s St. Botolph Club, and the Chicago area Rosenbach Galleries and The House of O’Brien, where it is believed to have been sold. Reviewing the St. Botolph exhibit, the Boston Transcript described the scene as “a huge fish gliding into a jungle of kelp where a nymph is hiding.” Spear was an avid fisherman, and created dozens of these underwater sea dweller mermaid scenes, though few are known to still exist.  This is a fresh California estate find and one of the finest paintings by the artist to come on the market. Housed in the original-to-the-painting Newcomb-Macklin Co. ornate gold carved frame.

 

 

 

Painting is in fine condition and is included in the catalogue raisonné that appears in the monograph Arthur Spear published by the Warren Historical Society/St. Botolph Club.

 

 

Arthur Prince Spear went to Paris to study under Jean Paul Laurens at the Julien Academy. Most of the artwork that Spear created was of otherworldly sea dwellers, mermaids, satyrs and nymphs and intended as fine art and sold through the Vose Galleries in Boston. The realm he choose to depict was quite his own, the occasional critic dismissed his paintings as “ornamental”.
The artist exhibited at The National Academy of Design, The Guild of Boston Artists, Rosenbach Gallery, the Carnegie Institute, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the National Arts Club.