Lot 1378 | Armand Guillaumin | La Côte face au Pont Charraud

GUILLAUMIN, ARMAND
Paris 1841 - 1927

Title: La Côte face au Pont Charraud.
Date: Ca. 1915.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 66 x 81,5cm.
Notation: Signed lower left: Guillaumin.
Frame: Framed.

Provenance:
Galeria de Arte Moderno, Caracas;
Private ownership, Germany, acquired there around 1976.

The colours of autumn are powerfully unleashed in this landscape in the valley of the Creuse. From a hill, the view falls down to a meadow behind which rises a hilly landscape with lush vegetation and a lonely farmstead. A narrow stream lined with bushes and trees meanders gently through the terrain. Armand Guillaumin regularly visited this place in his adopted hometown of Crozant in the centre of France in order to paint it again and again from different angles and at different times of day. As early as 1863, he was represented at the first Salon des Refusés and, beyond the tradition-steeped academy, advocated painting without narrative pretence. Like his colleague Claude Monet, Guillaumin strove to find an artistic form to paint the passing of time, to capture the fleeting moment. Impressionist painters rejected the belief in depicting reality and instead recognised in nature that light affects every object and provides them with different colours and expressions at different times of day. Guillaumin here captures midday. The landscape, which he captures on canvas with loose brushstrokes, is charged with warmth. With a broad palette of nuances and complementary contrasts, he works out the mood: lively, rich greens alternate with earthy vermilion and gossamer shades of pink, lilac and violet, with which he creates depth in the middle ground. On top of this, dabs of vibrant orange punctuate the hilly landscape with their luminous presence. The cloudless, turquoise-blue sky and the bright green tree, still deep in sap, create a counterbalance to the vibrant landscape - a splendid testimony to the impressive artistic passion of the important Impressionist, who achieves great mastery here.