Guillaumin met Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne at the Academie Suisse in 1861. He became a key member of the Impressionist group, contributing to the first revolutionary exhibition of the Salon des Refusés of 1863 and the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 together with Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Degas and Sisley.



Guillaumin was closely allied to Pissarro and Cezanne and, working together in developing the Impressionist imperative, they each painted landscapes en plein air, and concentrated on the effects of light in nature at different times of day.



Madame Guillaumin is a stunningly evocative demonstration of the central, Impressionist moment of the artist’s oeuvre. The work was completed just one year before the final Impressionist Exhibition that took place in Paris in 1886.



Furthermore, in this work one gains an insight into Guillaumin’s masterly understanding of the palette that was soon after to prompt the famous critic Felix Feneon to name him the “furious colourist”. Indeed Gulllaumin’s definitive quality within the Impressionist group was his challenging of the school’s muted tones in favour of an intrepid use of the brightest hues.















The artist’s tender depiction of his wife Madame Guillaumin, is furthermore, imbued with a sensitivity that goes beyond the formal qualities of the piece. The artist’s sheer delight in expressing the beauty of the natural world, and of his wife as she muses over a book, sheltering from the sunshine, is key. Guillaumin has captured a real sense of a relationship and a story to be told in this highly personal work.