Yellow and Pink Roses

During his brief and celebrated career, Bunker produced some of the most accomplished landscapes, still-lifes, and figural paintings of his generation. He counted among his friends many of the period’s greatest artists, including John Singer Sargent, Edmund Tarbell and Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Bunker additionally studied with William Merritt Chase in New York and Jean-Leon Gérôme in Paris.
Yellow and Pink Roses is a stunning example of Bunker's mastery of still life, executed with careful color and energetic brushwork that reflects his studies in France. As seen in the present example, "Bunker's images seem ephemeral, the physicality of the blossoms contradicted by the indecipherable spaces they inhabit" (E.E. Hirshler, Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist, ex. cat., Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1995, p. 48). Against the cool grey background, Bunker's sumptuous roses stand out, blossoming toward the viewer.