Sur Le Danube - Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927)

Armand Guillaumin (1841 - 1927)

Title: Sur Le Danube

Medium: Oil on canvas

Provenance: From a private London collection.

Signed lower right-hand side.

Dimensions: Overall size with the frame is 57cm x 45cm x 5cm and the painting measured at 45cm x 32cm

Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin was a French lithographer and painter who was part of the Impressionist movement. Known for his landscapes and bold colors, Guillaumin was the last survivor of those who participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, dying the year after Monet. One of his paintings of the river Seine was the basis for his good friend Paul Cézanne's first lithograph.

Possibly the least well known of the group of impressionist painters who worked in and around the Parisian art scene of the late 19th century, he was nonetheless one of the most accomplished in terms of his technical ingenuity and uniqueness. He had a significant influence on a number of very important contemporaries including Cézanne and Pissaro, and his work was highly regarded and confirmed thus by Vincent Van Gogh.

The record sale for the artist work at auction to date was for Chemin à Damiette, 1885 which sold for 335,500 euros in 2014 at Christie's Paris.

The painting offered is from the late 19th to early 20th century. We think that it was most likely composed around 1895. The subject is reminiscent of other nautical themed works by the artist, and like many of his accomplished colleagues he was also attracted to water and thematic compositions surrounding it. The piece offered is very typical of the painters work of the period and is typically bold in its use of tonality and colour. This is counterbalanced with the deftness of brush stroke, some of which is highly subtle in its interwoven elements, capturing the light on the river Danube with a single mast moored ship alongside a balconied terracotta faced villa.

In the background we see a close study of the opposite shoreline with a harmonious mix of landscape and buildings and a continuum of form and structure in the work so typical of the painter's oeuvre.

A beautifully balanced composition from this very well collected artist which is signed lower right.

The artists work is highly sought after and very well collected and to illustrate this a similar sized painting "Le pont Charraud, matin" (oil on canvas) sold only a couple of weeks ago ( 3/04/2025) at Bonhams for £25,600.

Biography:

Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin was born Paris. He worked at his uncle's while attending evening drawing lessons as well as for a French government railway before studying at the Académie Suisse in 1861.

Here he met Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro, with whom he maintained lifelong friendships. While he never achieved the stature of these two, his influence on their work was significant. Guillaumin exhibited with both Cézanne and Pissaro at the Salon des Refusés in 1863.

The three artists frequently painted in alongside each other in the 1870s and for a period for a Guillaumin and Cézanne had studios next door to each other on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris.

In 1873, Cézanne made the only etchings of his career, one of them depicting Guillaumin.

Guillaumin was a member of the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs (later dubbed Impressionistes) from the start and he participated in six of the eight Impressionist exhibitions: 1874, 1877, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886.

In the eyes of contemporary critics, he became known for his defined brushstrokes and use of bold colours. In 1886, an astute critic, Félix Fénéon, called him a "furious colourist". By the 1890s, his palette had grown even bolder, less faithful and he had been described as a "Fauve" a decade before Fauvism.

Guillaumin's studio was a meeting place for young artists such as Paul Gauguin, Paul Signac and Georges Seurat and In 1886, he befriended Vincent van Gogh, whose brother, Theo, exhibited and sold some of his works. Vincent held Guillaumin's work in high regard, commenting on it in at least 36 letters written from 1888 to 1890.

The painter enjoyed notoriety in specific circles during his lifetime where his own unique style appealed to a widening group of niche collectors.

Exhibitions included:

Galeries Durand-Ruel in 1895,
Galerie Ambroise Vollard in 1897,
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1901 and 1906,
Galerie Paul Rosenberg in 1908. Noted

Gallery holdings of the artist's work include:

Musée d’Orsay (48 works)
Petit Palais (91 works) in Paris,
The Tate Gallery London,
A number of important museums in Germany, Russia, the Netherlands and Spain.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC
The Art Institute of Chicago
Dijon: The Barrage at Crozant
Épinal (Musée Départemental d'Art Ancien et Contemporain): The Pont des Arts and the Louvre
Hamburg (Kunsthalle)
London (Tate Collection): Moret-sur-Loing (1902, oil on canvas)
Otterlo (Kröller-Müller Mus.): Unloading Coal
Paris (former Mus. du Luxembourg):
Pissarro Painting the Moulin des Bouchardonnes
Paris (Mus. d'Orsay): Hollow Lane in Snow; Still-life; Place Valhubert; Normandy Landscape:
Apple Trees; Portrait of the Artist (1870-1875); Barges on the Seine at Bercy (1871);
Sunset at Ivry (1874);
Reclining Nude (1877);
The Bridge at Charenton (1878);
Paris, Quai de la Gare, in Snow (1879);
Interior (1889); Fishermen (1891);
Dutch Landscape: Sailing-boats (1904); View of Agay (1895)
San Francisco (FAM)
St Petersburg (Hermitage): The Seine (c. 1867-1868, oil on canvas)

Condition report: The painting had been restored in recent times and is in overall predominantly original but latterly cleaned condition with just a few tiny areas of retouching which is generality well blended. There is craquelure throughout and no repairs whatsoever to the verso of the canvas. The canvas itself is in good tension and there are no deflections to the stretcher bars. The painting we believe was restored by Garve Hessenburg BA conservation and restoration studio of Arundel and this is supported by the conservator's label to the verso. The later frame is in good presentable condition and is offered as a gift. See notes below regarding frames.

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