Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 10

Eugène Lawrence Vail
"Soir de Novembre, Dordrecht, " Eugene Vail, Dutch Landscape with Boats, Cloudy

About the Item

Eugène Laurent Vail (1857 - 1934) Soir de Novembre, Dordrecht Oil on canvas 19 1/4 x 25 3/4 inches Signed lower left; titled in two places on the stretcher with various other inscriptions, stamped "MADAME G:VAIL A" and inscribed "177" in ink and "#43" in pencil on a partial label from Garde-Meuble Maple affixed to the stretcher Eugene Vail (Saint-Servan, France September 29, 1857 - Paris, December 28, 1934), the son of a French mother and an American father, Lawrence Eugene Vail, studied at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (where Alfred Stieglitz was born in 1864) and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1877. Then he became a student of William Merritt Chase and J. Carroll Beckwith at the Art Students League before returning to France. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1882 where he was instructed by Alexandre Cabanel, Raphaël Collin, and Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929), known as an extreme naturalist. When Bastien-Lepage died in 1884, Dagnan-Bouveret became the leader of the Naturalist School. He definitely made an indelible impression on Vail. According to Louise Cann, Vail soon became an independent painter working at Pont-Aven and Concarneau. It is difficult to determine when he separated from his teachers since he is listed as a student whenever he exhibited at the Paris Salon — that is, until 1899 when he dropped the mention of élève. A picture of a peasant girl, Seulette was his Salon debut painting in 1883, the same year that he sent two scenes of Brittany to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' exhibition, which documents his stay in that region. The next year he exhibited in the Salon: Fishing Port, Concarneau, which went to the Luxembourg Museum (it is now in the Musée Municipal of Brest). It has the Naturalist brown and gray palette and tonalist atmosphere but already shows that Vail had direct experience with scenes of life in coastal villages: "So convincing was his familiarity with the French coast that the critic Thiébault-Sisson claimed him as a Frenchman and declared that no American marine painter could touch his skill." (Maureen C. O'Brien, in Blaugrund, 1989, p. 218). In 1885, Vail exhibited Inner Port at Dieppe and in the following year On the Thames (Private collection), which later won him the Grand Diploma of Honor from an international jury in Berlin in 1891. Widow, the title of Vail's entry in the Salon of 1887 (unlocated), is a striking image of a woman standing on a beach, looking out to the expanse of the ocean where her husband obviously met his end. The innocent child who looks at us may have the same fate in store for him. Then in 1888, Vail completed his masterpiece, Ready, About! a "wall-size" 94 x 125½ inch canvas. The painting won a first-class gold medal in the Salon of 1888, then at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, Vail won another gold medal. The first precedent that comes to mind is Théodore Géricault's colossal Raft of the Medusa of 1819 (Louvre), the celebrated romantic image of castaways about to be rescued after being lost at sea. But while Géricault presents a massive, sculpturesque group of figures struggling on a raft just beyond our designated viewing space, Vail pulls the viewer into the picture, or more exactly, extends the diagonally rocking boat into the spectator's area, vividly anticipating the effects of cinematography. There is no more effective way to engage the spectator's attention and sympathies, and the illusionism is especially effective in this life-size picture. Vail's vigorous brushwork — a uniform use of rectangular strokes — adds to the motion-filled, dynamic actuality of this image, and the overall green-gray tonalities evoke the constantly menacing, cold and wet travails in the life of the fishermen in the Atlantic's rough waters. Theodore Child (1889, p. 518) wrote about this painting: "very beautiful in color, and amongst the very strongest and best pictures of this kind in the Exhibition." Dordrecht (unlocated) was Vail's painting exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1892, and in the following year he showed Fisherman — The North Sea at the Paris Salon, the same year in which he re-exhibited Dordrecht and On the Thames at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Vail won the coveted Légion d'Honneur in 1894. Some of his paintings found their way to European museums, for example, Soir de novembre (Odessa Museum) and Soir de Bretagne (Museo d'Arte Moderna, Venice). The latter was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. Also there was Voix de la mer (Voices of the Sea), which we identify as the painting that appears in an interior view of the American section, just to the right of a doorway (fig. 20 in Fischer, 1999), a simple marine painting. Some time after 1900, Vail turned to both impressionism and post-impressionism but no one seems to have charted this course. His Autumn near Beauvais, illustrated in International Studio (1902, p. 211), The Flags, St. Mark's Venice (1903; National Gallery of Art), and Grand Canal, Venice, ca. 1904 (Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design) demonstrate an impressionist technique with broken color. Mandel (1977, p. 202) wrote on the latter: "applied in short strokes juxtaposing brilliant hues of orange, blue, white, black and red, with a strong interplay between the warm pink tones of the walls and the green shadows of the black boats which are silhouetted against them." Cann (1937) believed that in Venice, Vail "found his true self." The Flags forecasts the Armistice Day pictures by Hassam and others, painted fifteen years later. Vail became involved in the Society of American Artists in Paris and the Société Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, whose membership included Frank Brangwyn, Charles Cottet (1863-1924), the famous Naturalist sculptor Constantin Meunier (1831-1905), Frits Thaulow (1847-1906), the painter of northern snowscapes, Walter Gay, and the post-impressionists Henri Martin (1860-1943) and Henri Le Sidanier (1862-1939). The group was represented by the Galerie Georges Petit. Naturally, such an association encouraged the seeking out of more modernist directions. In his Swiss mountain landscapes, Vail became more dynamic than ever, employing almost Fauvist brushwork. It seems unfortunate how a few American expatriate artists — Sargent and Whistler, for instance — have eclipsed great talents such as Eugene Vail. But when Vail passed away, the naturalist movement he was associated with was as dead as a doornail. Max Ernst published his surrealistic collage-novel, Une semaine de bonté and the exhibition called "Machine Art" opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where critic Alfred Barr attempted to raise household appliances to the level of Neoplatonic beauty.
  • Creator:
    Eugène Lawrence Vail (1857 - 1934, American)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 16.5 in (41.91 cm)Width: 19 in (48.26 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1841210510822

More From This Seller

View All
"Park Street, Boston" Arthur Clifton Goodwin, Impressionist Snowy Urban Scene
By Arthur Clifton Goodwin
Located in New York, NY
Arthur Clifton Goodwin Park Street, Boston Signed lower right Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches A painter especially known for street and waterfront scenes of Boston, Arthur Clifton Goo...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Farmhouses in Autumn, Giverny" Theodore Earl Butler, American Impressionism
By Theodore Earl Butler
Located in New York, NY
Theodore Earl Butler Farmhouses in Autumn, Giverny Signed "T.E. Butler" lower right Oil on canvas 21 1/4 x 25 1/2 inches Provenance The artist. Estate of the above. By descent throu...
Category

1890s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Old Whaling Wharf, Newport, Rhode Island" Paulette Van Roekens, Impressionist
Located in New York, NY
Paulette Van Roekens Old Whaling Wharf, Newport, Rhode Island, 1921 Signed and dated lower left Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches Painter Paulette van Roekens was born in France and attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her talent was recognized early on, and in 1916, she was awarded the John Sartain Fellowship at the Philadelphia School of Design. Her early paintings often were of still lifes, using flowers...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Hillside Landscape" Edwin Child, Farmland, Vast Rural Mountainous Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Edwin Child Hillside Landscape, 1896 Signed and dated lower right Oil on canvas 18 x 28 inches Edwin Burrage Child was a prominent New England portraitis...
Category

1890s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"White Horse" Frederick Lester Sexton, Bucolic Barn, Farm Scene, White Horse
By Frederick Lester Sexton
Located in New York, NY
Frederick Lester Sexton White Horse Signed lower right Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches Provenance Part of a Collection received from the Lyme Art Association. Frederick Lester Sexton received a lot of reviews and exhibitions in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, when he was at the height of his career. Because it captured the personal view of many people's wish to ignore national issues and simply live their lives in their homes, his work was favorably welcomed. The rise of modernist styles like Abstract Expressionism, which started to take over the American art scene in the 1950s, also contributed to Sexton's fall in popularity. As collectors and regular spectators discover once more that realism is a valid component of American art because it speaks directly and clearly to the beauty they perceive in their surroundings, many artists, like Sexton, are experiencing a renaissance. Cheshire, Connecticut, was the birthplace of Frederick Sexton in 1889. His father, J. Frederick Sexton, was the Rector of St. Peter's Church in Cheshire and a well-known Episcopal clergyman. The mother, Mary Louise Lester, was an amateur painter and came from a pretty well-known Hartford family. Frederick was killed in an open-hearth fire when he was eighteen months old. His right hand was badly burned and was never to be opened again. The father kept the family together after his mother passed away when he was nineteen. Sexton's mother taught him art, and he went to public schools in New Haven. He received the prestigious Winchester Prize for a year of study in Spain while attending the Yale School of Fine Art, where he studied under Augustus Tack...
Category

1930s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Trail of the Snowshoes" William Baxter Closson, Lyrical Snowy Landscape
By William Baxter Closson
Located in New York, NY
William Baxter Closson Trail of the Snowshoes, circa 1910 Signed lower right Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches Provenance The Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, Connecticut Born October 13, 184...
Category

1910s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

You May Also Like

The Proud Rooster, Oil, Framed, Texas Artist, Luckenbach, Impressionism 12x`12
Located in Houston, TX
The Proud Rooster is a framed oil painting of a Rooster by Texas Artist Cheri Christensen .This rooster is from Luckenbach, Texas . Luckenbach is famous for Rusty the Rooster. Fram...
Category

2010s American Impressionist Animal Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

California Lake Landscape
Located in Soquel, CA
Beautiful oil painting of a California lake by Margaret Ward (American, 20th century). Mountains of browns and reds shadow over a bright blue lake, with dark brown and green trees su...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Illustration Board

Through The Redwoods - California Impressionism Circa 1930s
Located in Soquel, CA
Through The Redwoods - American Impressionist American Impressionist oil painting depicting a forest of California redwood trees. A giant red...
Category

1930s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Dmitri Wright - Petite Mind Meadow - Opus Seven, Painting 2024
By Dmitri Wright
Located in Greenwich, CT
About the artist: As an American artist, Wright’s travels have taken him to paint and/or teach throughout the United States and visiting over a dozen National Park sites in addition...
Category

2010s American Impressionist Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Oil

Wells Fargo Express, Gold Country -- Columbia, California
By Cecil F. Chamberlin
Located in Soquel, CA
Charming oil painting of the Wells Fargo Express Office building in the gold country town of Columbia State Historic Park in Columbia, California by Cecil ...
Category

1950s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Illustration Board

Late 19th Century Landscape - "After The Snow"
By Constantin Aleksandrovich Westchiloff
Located in Soquel, CA
Gorgeous late 19th-century snowscape titled "After the Snow," by artist Constantin Alexandrovitch Westchiloff (1877-1945) Signed on the bottom right corner and titled on edge (the color differences in the signature letters are original to the painting prior to cleaning, and have not been modified or augmented). Unframed. Image size: 14.25"H x 20.25"W Westchiloff is an American-Russian artist. He was born in Russia in 1877, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg; as an artist, he traveled extensively in Europe and in the USA. He finally settled in New England, where he died in 1945. He is probably best-known for seascapes (particularly of the New England coastline) but was also well regarded for his landscapes, portraits and figures, and genre subjects. His work, especially after his travels in Europe and then in America, is closest to Impressionist in style. His favored medium was oil, which was well suited to his confident and strong technique. This, in turn, imbued his paintings of the rugged landscapes and seascapes of New England...
Category

Early 1900s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Recently Viewed

View All