Signed 'Guillaumin' bottom right, oil on canvas
25 3/4 x 32 in. (65.4 x 81.3cm)
Executed circa 1875.

Provenance

(Possibly) Wildenstein & Co,, New York, New York (per chalk inscription verso).
Private Collection, Maryland.

Note

We wish to thank Le Comité Guillaumin (Dominique Fabiani, Stéphanie Chardeau-Botteri, Jacques de la Béraudière) for confirming the authenticity of the present lot. The painting will be included in the second Volume of the Catalogue Raisonné of the work of Armand Guillaumin, and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity.

Armand Guillaumin was a founding member of the group that organized the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Between 1874 and 1886, his paintings were included in six of the eight Impressionist exhibitions. He also exhibited works in the first Salon des Refusés in 1863, along with Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne. Guillaumin's paintings are prized for their color "described as 'fauve'" (Christopher Gray, Armand Guillaumin, Chester, 1972, p. 49) and delicate application of impasto. Toward the end of his career, he had a one-person show with Paul Durand-Ruel, selling fifty-four of the sixty-four oil paintings on offer. In 1906, he was elected president of the section of paintings in the new Salon d'Automne.
The present painting depicts two elegant ladies walking along a promenade, counterbalanced by a large cluster of trees beyond a hillside containing a portion of a house. Here, Guillaumin's "very personal vision of color" (Gray, op. cit., p. 49) is on full display. As Gray notes: "If Monet's late works have the illusory quality of dreams, and in spite of their color, an almost elegiac quality of mood, Guillaumin's paintings are rejoicing paeans to the beauty of nature (…) His paintings are executed directly (…) and little sign of hesitation. As he was recording his direct response to the scene before him, he never worked on a canvas except in front of the motif" (Gray, op. cit., p. 49).