+ Expand

Description: Venise, le Campanile, le Palais Ducal, et la Piazzetta, vue prise de San Giorgio signed, dated and inscribed '5 Juillet 95 Venise A Juliette' (lower right) oil on canvas 14 1/8 x 21 3/8 in. 35.9 x 54.9 cm. Painted in Venice in 1895 PROVENANCE Madame Juliette Cabaud, Paris, to whom given by the artist. Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, Paris; sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 27 April, 1951, lot C, sold for Ff.550,000. E.J. Rousuck, New York. Scott and Fowles, New York. Madame Roscheu, New York, by whom acquired from the above. Anon. sale, Sotheby's New York, 12 May, 1999, lot 214 (sold for $745,000). Acquired by the present owner from the above sale. LITERATURE R. Schmit, EugŠne Boudin, vol. III, Paris, 1973, no. 3451 (illustrated p. 319). EXHIBITION Paris, Ecole National des Beaux-Arts, Exposition des oeuvres d'EugŠne Boudin, 1899, no. 116. NOTES EugŠne Boudin fist visited Venice in 1892, returning for a more prolonged stay during the summer of 1895 when he painted a number of views of the city, its canals and magnificent architecture. Such is the success of the best of these Venice pictures that Peter Sutton was inspired to compare Boudin's works with the greatest landscape artists who had worked in the city. He describes Boudin's Venice paintings as "sparkling images of the ancient city and its monuments which usually adopt a distant point of view in the tradition of Canaletto and Guardi, but are executed with a more animated touch that enlivens the sea and sky". The style of painting differs little from Boudin's treatment of the French coast. There is the same spontaneity and delicacy and more surprinsingly, the same range of colours. In the artist's eyes the skies of the Adriatic were very similar to the skies over the Channel' (J. Selz, EugŠne Boudin, Naefels, 1982, p. 84). In a letter to Paul Durand-Ruel dated from 20 June 1895, Boudin writes: "I am busy painting the views of Venice, a superb town as I have no need to tell you, but somewhat disguised by the usual painters of the area who have to some extent disfigured it by making it appear as a region warmed by the hottest suns...[Venice] like all the luminous regions is grey in colour, the atmosphere is soft and misty and the sky is decked with clouds just like the sky over Normandy or Holland" (J. Selz, Ibid, p. 86). Boudin's paintings of Venise were well received by collectors, and indeed it was the Venetian paintings which fetched record prices at his studio sale held after the artist's death in 1899. The present work was given directly to Juliette Cabaud, a governess, with whom the artist fell in love, and who was to share the last six years of his life. In January 1899, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts houses a large exhibition, where the present work presented, in honour of the artist on who Monet was to state: "J'avais compris, j'avais saisi ce que pouvait ˆtre la peinture par le seul exemple de cet artiste ‚pris de son art et d'ind‚pendance: ma destin‚e de peintre s'‚tait ouverte".