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Dimensions: measurements 51 1/4 by 76 3/4 in. alternate measurements 130.2 by 195 cm

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Provenance: Hammer Galleries, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1993

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Notes: This work is recorded in the archives of ?l?Association Les amis de Louis Valtat.?
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF MR. AND MRS. STEPHEN HILBERT

Best known for his resplendent landscapes and vivid flower compositions, Louis Valtat was to become a highly-regarded painter of the Post-Impressionist period. Having absorbed the chief tenets of classical Impressionism and Pointillism in the 1890s, Valtat was both intrigued and influenced by contemporaries such as Matisse, Marquet, Camoin, Manguin, Vlaminck, Derain, Dufy and Van Dongen, with whom he exhibited at the famous Salon dÂ?Automne of 1905.

The present work illustrates a profoundly personal scene, as it depicts Valtat�s young wife, Suzanne Nöel, amidst the private grounds of the couple�s garden at Agay. It is the perfect subject matter and setting for a meditation on the artist�s unique stylistic synthesis of form. As Raymond Cogniat contends, �The ambition of Impressionism was to express the maximum intensity of a moment in nature, and to suggest the rustle of foliage, the ripple of water and the ceaseless vibrations of light and shade�Something in [Valtat�s] temperament, however, impelled him towards a sense of permanence and profound stability. About 1895 he seems to have felt the urge to escape from the Impressionist formula in order to capture, not the transitory mood, but the more durable aspects of nature� (Cogniat, Louis Valtat, Paris, p. 25).