Jean Baptiste Armand Guillaumin
1841 - 1927Coucher de Soleil à Charenton or La Seine a Charenton, 1885
Signed lower right
Oil on canvas
31 3/4 x 25 5/8 in, 80.5 x 65 cm
‘Coucher de Soleil’ was created in 1885 the year the Impressionists dispersed from Paris for the countryside. The painting combines Guillaumin’s masterful use of perspective with an increasingly bright palette...
‘Coucher de Soleil’ was created in 1885 the year the Impressionists dispersed from Paris for the countryside. The painting combines Guillaumin’s masterful use of perspective with an increasingly bright palette and loose brushwork.
Guillaumin began his artistic career at the Académie Suisse in 1861, where he met Pissarro and Cézanne. He formed part of the first Impressionist group exhibition in 1874 and participated in six of the eight Impressionist shows. During the early part of the 1870s, Guillaumin worked alongside Pissarro, painting the landscape 'en plein air'. However, by the 1880s when he painted ‘Coucher de Soleil’, Guillaumin moved away from Impressionism, and became involved with Neo-Impressionists, exhibiting alongside Signac, Seurat and Odilon Redon at the first Salon des Independents of 1883.
During this period of change, Guillaumin shifted in his normal practice from painting at midday, as favoured by the Impressionists, which characteristically resulted in a palette structured around a yellow-blue contrast, to painting in the early morning or evening. This donned his paintings vivid contrasts of red and green, as seen in the setting sun of ‘Coucher de Soleil’.
The sketches of the labourer on the back of the canvas relate to a series Guillaumin created around 1880. Ranging from swift charcoal drawings to more detailed oil studies, Guillaumin repeatedly depicted the ‘Cribleur du sable’ in varying mediums. Each study presents the same identically posed man in a striped shirt. Guillaumin has drawn the figure twice on the back of ‘Coucher de Soleil’, experimenting with the position of the arm in the top sketch.
‘Coucher de Soleil’ was first owned by the French sculptor Eugène Blot before entering the collections of renowned playwright Georges Feydeau and prominent collector and supporter of Cézanne’s work Lucien Sauphar. Works by Guillaumin are held by numerous public galleries and museums worldwide including the Art Institute of Chicago, Hermitage Museum, Russia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Musée D'Orsay, Paris and Tate Gallery, London.
Guillaumin began his artistic career at the Académie Suisse in 1861, where he met Pissarro and Cézanne. He formed part of the first Impressionist group exhibition in 1874 and participated in six of the eight Impressionist shows. During the early part of the 1870s, Guillaumin worked alongside Pissarro, painting the landscape 'en plein air'. However, by the 1880s when he painted ‘Coucher de Soleil’, Guillaumin moved away from Impressionism, and became involved with Neo-Impressionists, exhibiting alongside Signac, Seurat and Odilon Redon at the first Salon des Independents of 1883.
During this period of change, Guillaumin shifted in his normal practice from painting at midday, as favoured by the Impressionists, which characteristically resulted in a palette structured around a yellow-blue contrast, to painting in the early morning or evening. This donned his paintings vivid contrasts of red and green, as seen in the setting sun of ‘Coucher de Soleil’.
The sketches of the labourer on the back of the canvas relate to a series Guillaumin created around 1880. Ranging from swift charcoal drawings to more detailed oil studies, Guillaumin repeatedly depicted the ‘Cribleur du sable’ in varying mediums. Each study presents the same identically posed man in a striped shirt. Guillaumin has drawn the figure twice on the back of ‘Coucher de Soleil’, experimenting with the position of the arm in the top sketch.
‘Coucher de Soleil’ was first owned by the French sculptor Eugène Blot before entering the collections of renowned playwright Georges Feydeau and prominent collector and supporter of Cézanne’s work Lucien Sauphar. Works by Guillaumin are held by numerous public galleries and museums worldwide including the Art Institute of Chicago, Hermitage Museum, Russia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Musée D'Orsay, Paris and Tate Gallery, London.
Provenance
Eugène Blot, FranceHotel Drouot, Paris, 9-10 May 1900, lot 56
George Feydeau
Lucien Sauphar (by 1914)
Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 17 March 1936, no. 12
Jean Gautier, Paris
Hotel Drouot, Paris, 16-17 May 1939, lot 169
Saint- Briauc, 14 December 1986
Sotheby's, London, 1 April 1987, lot 131
Literature
Charles Louis Borgmeyer, 'Armand Guillaumin (Chapter X: 'The Master Impressionists')', Fine Arts Journal, Vol. 30, No.2, February 1914, pp.51-75, illus.A. Clerc, Eugène Blot: Histoire d'une collection de tableaux modernes, cinquante ans de peinture (1882 à 1932), Saint-Amand, 1934, pp.12-13
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Dominique Fabiani and Philippe Cazeau and dated 7 June 2000. It will also be included in the upcoming second volume of the catalogue raisonné of Guillaumin currently being prepared by Fabiani and Cazeau.