Marie Réol

Landscape of Brittany in France

Circa 1920

Léon Pierre FÉLIX (Périgueux 1869 - 1940) The coast at Ploumanac'h - Bretagne Oil on canvas H. 46 cm; L. 55 cm Signed lower left, dated 1901 Provenance: Private collection, Burgundy...

Jean-Victor Bertin and workshop (Paris 1767 - 1842) Landscape of the Île-de-France region Oil on canvas H. 38 cm; W. 46 cm Related work: painting of the same composition held at the...

Alexandre DEFAUX (1826, Bercy - 1900, Melun) Yport, the Amont Cliff Oil on panel H. 59.5 cm; W. 38.5 cm Signed and located lower right A student of Corot, Alexandre Defaux was a fai...

Jean-Georges PASQUET (Périgueux 1851 - 1936) Pointe de Suzac at Saint Georges de Didonne Oil on canvas H. 59 cm; W. 85 cm Signed and dated 1885 lower left Provenance: Private collec...

Théophile Clément BLANCHARD 1820 - 1849 Oil on canvas 27 x 40 cm (45 x 58 cm with the frame) Signed lower right "Blanchard" Very nice 19th century gilded wooden frame French painter, lithographer and illustrator, Théophile Clément Blanchard is part of of those painters of the romantic era who represented picturesque views of France like Alexis Daligé de Fontenay or Eugène Cicéri. These painters traveled a lot and sought out picturesque sites, particularly in Normandy, Brittany, Switzerland and the Pyrenees. Blanchard participated in the illustration of “Picturesque and Romantic Travels in the Old France”. But the works of this romantic painter are rare because Blanchard died very young at twenty-nine year old ! We still know of him, in particular, a view of Bugey (dated 1846) which is at the Louvre Museum and a “Delicious Landscape” (from the 1840s) at the Salies museum at Bagnères de Bigorre...

Here for your consideration is an outstanding oil on canvas painting by Max Silbert. Signed lower right. Circa 1915. Recently professionally cleaned with no restorations. The fra...

"Brittany" by Maurice Mazeilie (French) watercolour painting on card, unframed stamped verso painting: 5.5 x 7 inches A delightful original painting by the 20th century French Impr...

Edward Francis Rook American, 1870-1960 Brittany Oil on Canvas 30 by 30 in. W/frame 38 by 38 in. Signed lower left Circa, 1898-1900 Rook, born in New York City on September 21, 1870, became one of the most original impressionists at Old Lyme. First he was a student of Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian.  Life started out to be rather promising for Rook, around the turn of the century.  He exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, both in 1898, when his harbor scene, entitled Pearl Clouds — Moonlight was reproduced in International Studio, in April.  In addition, the PAFA presented him with the Temple Gold Medal for Deserted Street, Moonlight, which the Academy purchased.  Three years later, Rook was awarded a bronze medal at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, where he exhibited three landscapes.  Caffin (1902, p. xxxvi) praised the artist's "translucent quality of color," which suggests a study of color theory.  Also in 1901, Rook married Edith Sone.  For most of 1902, the Rooks were in Mexico. Rook came to Old Lyme in October of 1903.  The date is significant because Childe Hassam was also there that month.  Hassam would more or less re-orient the artists' colony from Tonalism to impressionism.  Rook would move there permanently two years later.  He took two medals at the St. Louis Universal Exposition (1904) where his landscapes from the Mexican trip were displayed.  More awards followed: a silver medal at the International Fine Arts Exposition in Buenos Aires, 1910, a gold medal at San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915,  a Corcoran Bronze Medal, and a William A. Clark Award in 1919 for Peonies.   By 1924, the artist was made a National Academician.  Despite all these awards and recognition, Rook did little in the way of selling his art and reportedly, his prices were too high.  His paintings were handled by Macbeth and Grand Central Art Galleries. Rook was active in Old Lyme's art community.  As stated above, he would have met Hassam that October in 1903 but Willard Metcalf had departed at the end of the summer.  As several writers have explained (Connecticut and American Impressionism, 1980, p. 123), Hassam "was the catalyst around whom [impressionism] coalesced."   Rook's niece, Virginia Rook Garver, who happened to be the grand-niece of Hassam, confirmed that Rook and Hassam knew each other in Europe — before they went to Old Lyme (Fischer, 1987, p. 19).  Rook was one of the relatively young painters to come to Old Lyme, along with Gifford Beal, William Chadwick, and Robert Nisbet, on the wave of impressionism, initiated there by Hassam and Metcalf.  Old Lyme became a center of American impressionism, and as Donelson F. Hoopes remarked, "under Hassam, the shoreline of Connecticut became a kind of Giverny of America."  Among Ranger's group, palettes started to become lighter, except those of the most determined tonalists.  Ranger himself, perhaps admitting defeat, moved to Noank in 1904.  Rook is best known for his views of Bradbury's Mill, which was soon called Rook's Mill, owing to the painter's many versions of the scene.  One, called Swirling Waters, dated ca. 1917, is in the Lyme Historical Society.  Even more famous is Rook's Laurel, dated between 1905 and 1910 (Florence Griswold Museum), in which a profuse laurel bush (the state flower), is set off by a spectacular Constable-like background.  But Swirling Waters could never be confused with Constable, with its violent brushwork, impasto-layered water, and bright, almost chalky, plein-air palette.  Gerdts (1984, p. 226) compares the paintings of Walter...