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Description: PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE CHARLES AND MARY DUGAN-CHAPMAN, LONDON

1848-1894
VILLAS À VILLERS-SUR-MER

measurements
65 by 81cm.

alternate measurements
25 5/8 by 31 7/8 in.

Painted in 1880.

signed G. Caillebotte (lower right)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Emile Billard, Le Havre (a gift from the artist circa 1894)
Private Collection, Rouen (by descent from the above)
Kaplan Gallery, London (acquired circa 1966)
Hammer Galleries, New York (acquired in 1974)
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 28th June 1988, lot 11
Purchased at the above sale by the late owners

EXHIBITED

London, Kaplan Gallery, A Selection of Impressionist and Post Impressionist Paintings, Watercolours, Pastels and Drawings from the Collection of the Kaplan Gallery, 1966, no. 58, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Bord de mer, Biarritz)

LITERATURE

Marie Bérhaut, La Vie et l'~uvre de Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, 1951, no. 109
Marie Bérhaut, Caillebotte, sa vie et son ~uvre, Paris, 1978, no. 150, illustrated p. 133
Marie Bérhaut, Gustave Caillebotte. Catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels, Paris, 1994, no. 162, illustrated p. 137

NOTE

Caillebotte first visited Normandy in June 1880, and returned there every summer until 1884, painting coastal views and holiday villas at Villiers-sur-Mer, Trouville and Honfleur. In his depictions of Normandy, Caillebotte abandoned its elegant atmosphere and fashionably dressed visitors that dominated Boudin's depictions of the region, and focused instead on landscapes in which the human figure is absent. His first Normandy paintings of 1880 signalled a new phase in Caillebotte's art, during which he moved away from the urban scenes and devoted himself almost entirely to landscapes and seascapes.

The most striking feature of the present work is the contrast between the lush greenery, the sea and sky on one side, and the bright orange, man-made villas on the other. Discussing Caillebotte's seascapes painted in Normandy, Rodolphe Rapetti wrote that 'his depictions of villas by the sea were the most original works he did there. The presence of these recent constructions nestling in the otherwise unblemished coast -- and Caillebotte did nothing to elide them: on the contrary, he stressed their intrusive quality -- produces a strange effect, one related to his unsettling vision of the modern city' (R. Rapetti, Gustave Caillebotte, The Unknown Impressionist (exhibition catalogue), Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1996, p. 163).