DreamingofFrance

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Spring 2021

Dreaming of France Paintings and Works on Paper

On view by appointment in New York

Jill Newhouse Gallery 4 East 81 st Street New York, NY 10028 Tel ( 212 ) 249-9216 email: info@jillnewhouse.com

Additional selections on view at www.jillnewhouse.com

c a t a l o g u e

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot french, 1796-1865

Ville d’Avray – View of the Cabassud Houses from Corot’s Property

c. 1855 Oil on parqueted wood panel 10 5 ⁄ 8 x 15 ¼ inches ( 27 x 39 cm) provenance: Collection Alfred Robaut (d. 1909 ); Private Collection. literature:

Alfred Robaut. L’oeuvre de Corot: catalogue raisonné et illustré , 2 nd ed. Vols. 1 – 5 . 1905 . Reprint, Paris: Léonce Laget, 1965 . vol II, no. 924 , p. 290 , illus. p. 291 ; Gary Tinterow, et al. Corot . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996 , p. 229 , fn. 8 (cited in entry for cat. 102 as a preliminary study for R 917 , now in the collection of the Des Moines Art Center). exhibition: Ville d’Avray, Musée de Ville d’Avray, France. Corot à Ville d’Avray . December 1987 . As Louis Guinon wrote in his Petite histoire de la maison de Corot, à Ville d’Avray (Paris, 1925 ), the Corot family property “near the streams of Ville d’Avray, shaded by splendid trees, had a primordial influence on the development of his talents.” Purchased by Corot’s father Louis-Jacques in 1817 for the sum of FF 25 , 000 , the house at # 5 , rue du Lac had two floors and a mansard attic. Corot’s room was on the second floor facing east over the lake. The village and its various landscape motifs provided a constant source of inspiration for Corot’s art throughout his career, and he returned over and

over again to the view shown here of the large white Cabassud houses behind a screen of trees, next to the rue du Lac (also called the “Chemin de Corot”) that separated the Sevres woods to the right and the pond at the left. Built as an inn in the late nineteenth century by Jean-Baptiste Cabassud (the writer Alphonse Daudet was a noted guest), these white buildings are landmarks in Corot’s numerous depictions of the area. Our work is a preparatory study for the painting Ville d’Avray. L’Etang et les maisons Cabassud (The Pond and the Cabassud Houses at Ville-d’Avray) , 1855 – 60 , in the Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the Des Moines Art Center. Both works adopt the same point of view, looking across the pond toward the Cabassud houses with the rue du Lac at right.

Corot, Ville d’Avray: Pond and Cabassud Houses at Ville-d’Avray , oil on canvas, 18 ¼ x 21 ¾ inches, Des Moines Art Center (Robaut 917 )

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot french, 1796 - 1865

View in Fontainebleau

c. 1823 – 24 Oil on board 8 5 ⁄ 8 x 13 inches ( 22 x 33 cm) Estate sale stamp, recto: Lugt 460 and verso: Lugt 3905 provenance: Vente Corot, 1875 , no. 240 ; Paul Détrimont, Paris (probably purchased with 18 other works at above sale); Cornelis Hoogendijk (d. 1911 ), his sale, Amsterdam, May 21 – 22 , 1912 , no. 14 ; Anonymous sale Amsterdam, April 22 – 28 , 1947 ; André Schoeller and Jean Dieterle. Corot. Deuxième supplement à “L’Oeuvre de Corot” par A. Robaut et Moreau-Nélaton . Paris: Quatre Chemins-Éditart, 1956 , no. 2 Our painting dates from Corot’s early career right after his years as a student of Achille-Etna Michallon ( 1796 – 1822 ) and when he was a student of Jean-Victor Bertin ( 1767 – 1842 ). From Michallon he had learned the technique of pleine-air painting, a practice intended as a precursor to the more laborious work of constructing landscape tableaux in the studio. However, for Corot and subsequent generations of modern landscape artists, the spontaneity and freshness of these preliminary studies became the end goal, as they sought to preserve the aesthetic of the sketch in their finished works. Henri Vermunt, Wassenaar, Holland; Private Collection, France since 1960 . literature:

Here, Corot situates the viewer at the base of a steep ridge looking up the rocky hillside, painted deep brown at the base and pale tan at the crest, indicating the characteristic sandy soil of Fontainebleau. Clumps of deep green trees and shrubs punctuate the composition’s middle ground, leading our eyes toward the vivid blue sky and white clouds at the horizon. This interesting and radical composition became part of Corot’s repertoire in his outdoor studies and paintings, as did the device of viewing a hillside from a slightly lowered angle and making it the center of his composition. He would go on to paint sights in Italy with the same perspective. It is perhaps most beautifully used in The Metropolitan Museum’s wonderful study Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas- Bréau of 1832 , and the 1833 work for which it is preparatory Hagar in the Wilderness .

Corot, Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Bréau , 1832 or 1833 , oil on paper, laid down on wood, 15 5 ⁄ 8 x 19½ inches, The Metropolitan Museum of art, Accession Number: 1979 . 404

Théodore Rousseau french, 1812 - 1867 . A Cloudy Day in the Forest of Fontainebleau

1855 – 60 Oil on panel 8¼ x 10 5 ⁄

8 in. ( 21 x 27 cm)

Signed lower left This work has been authenticated by Michel Schulman.

This panel painting, probably done outdoors, is related to several compositions dating from the late 1850 s in Barbizon.

Eugène Carrière french, 1849 - 1906

Portrait of his Son, Léon

c. 1885 Oil on board 6½ x 4½ in. ( 16 . 5 x 11 . 4 cm) Signed lower right

provenance: Marlboro Galleries; Christie’s New York, Tuesday, June 16 , 2009 , lot 148 , where purchased; Private Collection, New York.

Eugène Carrière was a Symbolist painter known for his monochromatic portraits and paintings of intimate family life. His works were notable for their nuanced umber tones and hazy brushwork creating the impression of the figure materializing out of, or merging into, the surface of the canvas. The misty appearance of Carrière’s work was prized by contemporaries tired of precisely detailed and realistic paintings. A critic once compared Carrière’s style to that of his colleague Auguste Rodin, writing, “Rodin paints in marble and Carrière sculpts with shadow.” By 1885 , Carrière’s palette was approaching the grisaille of his mature style. He was painting somber family portraits such as The Sick Child , 1885 (Musée d’Orsay). In this

painting of his wife comforting his son Léon, the only color is a touch of red in the flowers and the yellow gold of his son’s hair. The subdued color scheme produces an ethereal effect. This effect can be seen in our painting of the same year in which the sweet face of his son, Léon, is highlighted only with the color of his golden hair and soft rose of his lips.

Eugène Carrière, The Sick Child , 1885 , oil on canvas, 39 7 ⁄

8 x 32 in.

( 101 . 3 x 81 . 5 cm), Musée d’Orsay.

Albert Dubois-Pillet french, 1846 - 1890

Landscape at La Grande Jatte

1884 – 86 Oil on canvas 10 5 ⁄ 8 x 7 3 ⁄

8 in. ( 27 x 18 . 9 cm)

Signed lower right

provenance: Felix Fénéon, Paris, by 1886 ; Private Collection by 1967 ; Collection Régine and Guy Dulon, Beauchamp; Sale Paris, Binoche Renaud-Giquello & Associés, June 19 , 2015 ; Stephen Ongpin Fine Art; Private Collection since 2016 . literature: Félix Fénéon. ‘L’Impressionnisme aux Tuileries’, L’Art Moderne de Bruxelles , 19 September 1886 . reprinted in Joan U. Halperin. Geneva: Oeuvres plus que complètes, 1970 . Vol.I, pp. 54 – 55 ; Lily Bazalgette. Albert Dubois-Pillet: sa vie et son oeuvre ( 1846 – 1890 ) . Villejuif, 1976 , p. 98 , pp. 162 – 63 , pp. 170 – 71 (as Pré en contre-bas and Paysage de la Grande Jatte ), not illustrated; Marnin Young. ‘Fénéon’s Art Criticism,’ in Starr Figura , Isabelle Cahn and Philippe Peltier. Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde . exhibition catalogue, MoMA: New York, 2020 , pp. 38 – 39 , fig. 20 . exhibitions: Paris, Pavillon de la Ville de Paris. Troisième exposition de la Société des Artistes Indépendants . March-May 1887 . no. 153 (as Pré en contre-bas , lent by Fénéon); Paris, Pavillon de la Ville de Paris. ‘Rétrospective Dubois-Pillet’, in Septième exposition de la société des artistes indépendants . March–April 1891 . no. 434 (as Pré en contre-bas , lent by Fénéon);

Paris, Galerie Braun et Cie. Le Néo-Impressionnisme , February–March 1932 . no. 11 (as Paysage , lent by Fénéon); Paris, Galerie Hervé. Quelques tableaux des maîtres néo-impressionnistes . May–June 1967 . no. 14 (as Paysage à la Grande Jatte ); Kochi, The Museum of Art, and elsewhere. Georges Seurat et le Néo- Impressionnisme 1885 – 1905 . no. 32 (as Le pré en contrebas ). Born in Paris in 1846 , Dubois-Pillet was a self-taught artist and central figure in the Parisian avant garde, when as a founding member of Société des Artistes Indépendants, he befriended another young painter named Georges Seurat. In May 1886 , Georges Seurat exhibited the groundbreaking A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition. Depicting a popular and fashionable weekend spot on the Seine outside of Paris that had also been painted by Monet, Sisley and Van Gogh, Seurat’s work employed the new technique of Pointillism, with small dots of pure color scientifically positioned so as to blend in the viewer’s eye. Our Pointillist Landscape of La Grande Jatte , was painted at exactly the same moment. Its first owner was the renowned scholar and critic Felix Fénéon, who was recently the subject of an exhibition at MoMA titled Felix Fénéon—The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond . It was Fénéon who gave Pointillism its name, first using the expression peinture au point (“painting by dots”), although Seurat actually preferred the label “Divisionism,” or for that matter, “Chromoluminarism.” But it was Pointillism that stuck. Luminous and intricately colored, this small work shows us the important aesthetic and stylistic transition taking place in French art in the late 1890 s. Works by Dubois-Pillet are rare; the artist only lived to the age of 44 , and many works in the estate were destroyed the following year in a studio fire.

Hippolyte Petitjean french, 1854 – 1929 . Sous-bois 1890 – 94 Oil on board, laid on panel 11 5 ⁄ 8 x 15 5 ⁄

8 in. ( 29 . 6 x 40 cm)

provenance: Galerie Zack, Paris; Private collection, acquired from above in 1966 ; Samuel Josefowitz, Lausanne; Sale Sothebys New York, May 4 , 2011 (lot 258 ); With Stephen Ongpin Fine Art; Private Collection.

exhibitions: ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Museum. A Feast of Colour Post- Impressionists from private collections . September 15 –November 25 , 1990 . excat, John Sillevis, Hans Verbeek and Hans Kraan. p. 160 – 61 , no 58 ; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and Lausanne, Fondation de l’Hermitage. Pointillisme: Sur les traces de Seurat , ( Pointillismus auf den Spuren von Georges Seurat ). September 6 –November 30 , 1997 , continuing to Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, January 23 –May 31 , 1998 . Rainer Budde, ed., exhibition catalogue, p. 253 , no 101 . Accompanied by a photo-certificate from Stéphane Kempa and to be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné. Although he lived until the age of seventy-five, Petitjean was never very prolific as a painter. His subject matter was diverse and included landscapes, urban scenes, mythological subjects and, occasionally, portraits.

Petitjean had come to Paris in 1872 , studying first with the academic master Alexandre Cabanel. Everything changed when he befriended Georges Seurat in 1884 and was invited to join the Neo-Impressionists artists in 1886 . The term Neo-Impressionism was coined by the art critic Félix Fénéon in a review of the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 , where divisionist paintings by Seurat, Signac and Camille Pissarro were hung together in one room. Petitjean exhibited in Paris and Brussels, in spite of struggling financially and earning most of his income as a teacher. Only at a small group show in 1899 at Galerie Durand-Ruel did he sell enough paintings to finally achieve some financial stability. In a notebook in which the artist carefully recorded his output after 1886 , numerous paintings, drawings and watercolors are listed as having been being gifted or sold to creditors in exchange for services, or to pay bills, while in several years no sales are recorded at all. This was complicated by the decline of the appeal of the movement in general, even for artists Pissarro and Signac, after the death of Seurat in 1891 . Petitjean, however, never abandoned pointillism as a method of artistic expression. Our work, executed within a few years of Georges Seurat’s La Grande Jatte , dates to 1890 – 94 , the years when Petitjean’s work was closest to Seurat’s in technique and theory.

Balthus french, 1908 – 2001

Fleurs

1963 Oil and casein on canvas 13¾ x 17 5 ⁄ 8 in. ( 35 x 45 cm) Initialed and dated lower right

provenance: Frédérique Tison; by descent in the family; sale, Paris, Artcurial, Collection of Frédérique Tison , December 8 , 2020 , lot 139 Private Collection, US. literature: Gerard Regnier. Balthus: Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee National D’art Moderne, Paris, 5 Novembre 1983 – 23 Janvier 1984 : The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 21 Fevrier– 13 Mai 1984 . Paris: Musee national d’art moderne, 1983 . Catalogue of Paintings by Balthus, no. 213 , p. 377 . Leymarie. Balthus . Geneva: Skira, 1990 . p. 142 ; Virgnie Monnier. Balthus, catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre complet . Paris: Gallimard, 1999 . no. P 322 , reproduced p. 190 . exhibitions: Bevaix, Galerie Arts Anciens. Balthus, peintures, aquarelles, dessins . November – December 1975 , no. 4 ; Ornans, Musée Maison Natale Gustave Courbet. Balthus dans la maison de Courbet. Summer 1992 , no. 51 . The artist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, known simply as Balthus, developed a repertoire of controversial and erotic subject matter unique in art history. By combining elements of the actual world with the aesthetics

of past artists—such as Poussin and Piero della Francesca—Balthus produced art that was filled with paradox, creating haunted worlds that are provocative and poetic. Working in Paris throughout the 1930 s, and achieving a high level of success through exhibitions at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, Balthus fled Nazi France in 1942 and went to Switzerland, where he became a friend of the publisher Albert Skira as well as the writer and member of the French Resistance, André Malraux. He returned to France in 1946 and eventually traveled with André Masson to Southern France, meeting figures such as Picasso and Jacques Lacan, who would eventually become a collector of his work. In 1961 , Balthus began his 18 -year tenure as the director of the Académie Française at the Villa Medici in Rome. In 1576 , when Ferdinando de’ Medici hired Jacopo Zucchi to decorate the walls of this historic villa, he envisioned the house and gardens as a personal museum. Inspired by this history, Balthus embarked on a campaign to restore the Villa Medici in the Renaissance tradition, placing sculpture in the garden and building façade, and restoring the frescoes. The frescos were particularly interesting to Balthus. The dry surface, muted tones and flat stylized renderings of fruit and flowers are all present in Fleurs where the colorful bouquet of flowers is related to the larger work La Vase Bleu , 1963 – 64 (cat. rais. no. P 323 ). In both paintings, Balthus incorporates favorite objects from his studio, his checkerboard tray and wavy mouthed vase, into this Roman aesthetic; and to imitate the surface of a fresco, Balthus experimented with casein, eventually using it, along with tempera, to paint his masterpiece from this period, La Chambre turque , 1965 – 6 (Centre Pompidou). Fleurs is one of only 4 finished oil paintings sold in 2020 in Paris from the collection of Frédérique Tison, the artist’s model and muse, and previously housed at the Château de Chassy in the Morvan.

Balthus, La Vase Bleu , 1963 – 64 (cat. rais. no. P 323 )

Piet Mondrian dutch, 1872 – 1944

Farmyard with Sheep, c. 1905 verso : Female Nude, c. 1909 – 11

Conte, charcoal, and pencil on paper 13 x 17 in. ( 33 x 43 . 2 cm)

provenance: Collection of the artist until 1911 ; Johannes Fredericus Samuel Esser, Amsterdam, by 1912 ;

Sal Slijper, Blaricum, inv./cat.nr 922 , by c. 1946 - As indicated in the Slijper inventory, acquired directly from Dr. Esser, around the time of his death in 1946 (Welsh/Joosten 1998 ); Charmion von Wiegand, New York City, after 1956 – 1983 ; Collection of Khyongla Rato, New York City, by descent from above in 1983 . literature: Michel Seuphor. Piet Mondrian, Life and Work . New York: H.N. Abrams, 1955 . cat. no. 53 , p. 411 , cc. 77 , p. 363 , illustrated p. 66 , as Autumn Landscape , c. 1902 – 03 , collection S.B. Slijper; Robert Welsh and Joop M. Joosten. Piet Mondrian: Catalogue Raisonne . London: Harry N. Abrams, 1998 . A 317 & A 645 , illustrated p. 277 & 420 , as Farmyard with Sheep , drawing, c. 1905 ; Martin Brauen. A Sameness Between Us: The Friendship of Charmion Von Wiegand and Piet Mondrian in Letters and Memoirs . Stuttgart: Arnoldsche, 2020 . p. 196 , illustrated in color. Netherlands Institute for Art digital edition of Piet Mondrian— Catalogue Raisonné. Number A 317

This drawing, which has a long and distinguished provenance, is related to a painting of 1905 , now in a private collection. Agrarian landscapes were a favorite subject for Mondrian at this time, who would eventually reduce these natural forms into lines and purely abstract geometric grids. On the verso of this sheet is a portrait drawing of the woman who was probably Mondrian’s financé at the time, an image which was not in fact discovered until the drawing changed hands in 1983 .

Mondrian kept the drawing in his studio where he lived from 1909 – 1911 and it appears on the wall in a photograph of 1912 . Robert P. Welsh, in the catalogue raisonné on the artist, notes: Most remarkably, this drawing in a frame appears as the lowest of three hung on a narrow partition of Mondrian’s Sarphatipark residence… Since it is believed that the artist hung only pictures which were of interest to him at the time, the inclusion of this earliest of the images on display testifies to its continuing fascination as a motif” (Welsh, op. cit ., p. 277 ). By 1912 , this drawing was in the collection of a plastic surgeon named J.F.S. Esser who was the first serious collector of Mondrian’s work, at a time when the artist was forced into teaching to earn his living. Esser’s surgical career had a long and varied path, and he lived in Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, and France, with a summer home in Monaco, finally moving to the United States in 1940 , where after various speculative investments he died destitute in Chicago in 1946 . Esser’s art collection, which The Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague has largely reconstructed, consisted primarily of

drawings, watercolors and oil sketches. But it is important to note that it consisted of works by artists later considered “modern”, and on the rise at the beginning of the 20 th century. The drawing was then purchased around 1946 by Mondrian’s patron and friend the collector Sal Slijper. For years, Slijper would help support Mondrian by buying works, offering him commissions, organizing exhibitions, and helping place his paintings in museum collections. By 1956 the drawing was in the collection of Charmion von Wiegand, an American journalist and former Moscow correspondent for the Hearst newspaper chain, as well as a tough-minded art critic. Mondrian had come to New York in 1940 at the age of 68 to flee the war, and he loved the city. The pace and novelty and the sense of American optimism provided a perfect manifestation of the “New Life,” as he called modernity. Wiegand was introduced to Mondrian by the painter Carl Holty. She interviewed him in 1941 and was enormously impacted, becoming an abstract painter herself

after the master’s death. A book about their relationship titled A Sameness Between Us: The Friendship of Charmion Von Wiegand and Piet Mondrian in Letters and Memoirs, illustrates our work front and back (p. 196 , illustrated). The catalogue raisonné records fewer than 20 landscape drawings from this early period and ours is the most complete and fully developed.

verso