Victor Gabriel Gilbert

Bathing in the Forest

ROWLAND WHEELWRIGHT A beautiful painting by Roland Wheelwright in keeping with his traditional subject matter. This piece is a large and important example of his work and is not oft...

Gaston BALANDE (1880-1971) Picture Size: 21 x 29" (52.5 x 72.5cm) Outside Frame Size: 29 x 37" (72.5 x 92.5cm) Antique oil painting on canvas A wonderful example of Balande's work ...

Childe Hassam 1859-1935 American The Bather Signed and dated “Childe Hassam” (lower right) Oil on canvas Considered by many to be America’s foremost Impressionist painter, Childe Hassam composed his tranquil and intimate oil on canvas The Bather in the early years of the 20th century. The creation of the artwork aligns with a period of Hassam’s career where the artist’s palette was transforming, matching ever closer with the pale and pastel hues of French Impressionists like Claude Monet. Even the subject — a nude woman — represents a greater alignment with the Impressionist project, as artists of the movement and their non-mythological and non-biblical nudes still generated cries of indecency. With Hassam’s signature brushwork and attention to color, The Bather serves as a dream-like vision, serene and sensuous, of a young woman bathing in a lush forest. While the artist's skill for landscape painting is on display, it is Hassam's command of form, light and color that brings this canvas to life. He creates a captivating composition, placing the nude subject in the bottom left of the canvas. The soft, undulating curves of the woman's body in contrapposto and the glow of her fair skin are balanced by the strong verticals and deep earth tones of the tall trees to her right. Hassam delicately frames the nude in the vivid blues of the distant water, building luminous color that further draws the viewer’s eye and results in a somewhat voyeuristic appeal — endowing his nude with both a natural innocence and an intentional sensuality. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Childe Hassam began his artistic career as a freelance illustrator, working for national publications such as Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s Monthly, and The Century. His first solo exhibition of watercolors took place in Boston in 1883, and he quickly catapulted onto the international scene, winning a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. The year before the present work was created, he received the Webb Prize from the Society of American Artists for another landscape painted at Gloucester. Hassam would receive numerous other awards throughout his career, most notably the Gold Medal for Distinguished Services to Fine Art from the American Dealers Association. A true master, Hassam depicted a way of life characteristic of both American and French society, and his work elucidates a critical chapter in American art history. Today, his work resides in the Oval Office of the White House and in numerous important museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others. This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work. Circa 1905 Canvas: 24 1/2“ high x 20 18” wide Frame: 35 7/8“ high x 31 1/4” wide x 3 1/4“ deep Provenance: Private Collection of William Young...

Signed oil on canvas nudes in landscape circa 1910 by Belgian neo-impressionist painter Georges Lemmen. The work depicts nude bathers on a sunny beach beside the sea. Signature: Signed lower left with the cachet of painter Dimensions: Framed: 23.5"x24.5" Unframed: 14.5"x15.5" Provenance: Olivier Bertrand (expert on the painter) has confirmed the authenticity of this work Georges Lemmen was the son of an architect and studied under Amédée Bourson at the academy in St Joost-ten-Node. He was invited in 1889 to join the Group of Twenty ( Cercle des XX) which had been launched in 1884 by Oscar Maus and had in the interim emerged as an influential force in Belgian artistic circles, not least by bringing to public and critical attention the work of such artists as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. The Cercle des XX would be reborn in 1894 as La Libre Esthétique. In the early days of the Cercle des XX, Lemmen espoused a pointilliste technique. His earlier painting was clearly influenced by the Neo-Impressionists; over time, however, his style became more subtle and nuanced - recalling, perhaps, that of his compatriot Van Rysselberghe, another Cercle des XX member. With the group's rebirth as the Libre Esthétique, Lemmen's work became more intimiste in character, most notably in his portraits, nudes and still-lifes, where the influence of Bonnard and Vuillard is unmistakable, as is that of Renoir, particularly after Lemmen's travels in the Midi in 1911. From this point onwards, he would go on to make a major contribution to the renewal of the graphic and decorative arts in terms of his input to the new 'free' aesthetic and to Art Nouveau. Although his draughtsmanship retained its essential purity and elegance of line, his painting became more fleshy, imprecise and sensual, his compositions governed less by technical considerations than by the urgent need to express his emotions. Between 1889 and 1893, Lemmen exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, aligning himself with the Neo-Impressionists. In 1893, Henry van de Velde invited him to participate in the Pour l'Art association that had been created in Antwerp. He travelled to the south of France in 1911. By this juncture, he had already exhibited solo on two occasions (in 1906 and 1908) at the Galerie Druet in Paris. A further solo exhibition in 1913, his first in Brussels, cemented Lemmen's reputation. Museum and Gallery Holdings: Bremen (Kunsthalle): Standing Nude Combing her Hair Brussels (Mus. royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique): Children's Room (watercolour); Reading; Couture; Young Girl by the Sea...