Alfred Casile "the Open-air Artist"

Alfred Casile. Oil on canvas "The Artist in the Open Air" signed lower left A. Casile. French School. 71 X 91 cm. Alfred Casile (1848-1909) was a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Marseille. He left for Paris in 1879 where he met Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) and Claude Monet (1840-1926). He became friends with his fellow plein-air artists and painted on the banks of the Marne and in Normandy. He exhibited at the 1879 Salon "A Cliff in Normandy". He traveled to Italy as far as Naples and then returned to Marseille. From 1900 to 1903 he worked in Belgium where he painted landscapes of Brussels, Ostend and the dunes of the North Sea. Finally returning to Marseille, he devoted himself exclusively to painting his native Provence. The Museum of Fine Arts in Marseille, the Museums of Aix, Avignon, Béziers, Digne, Grenoble and Evreux, among others, possess his works. Our painting is one of the first works produced by Alfred Casile. The contribution of the craft of his friends, precursors of Impressionism, is here significant and the influence of Monet and his paintings, “Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe” and “Femmes au Jardin”, from 1866, is evident. “The Artist in the Open Air” went under the hammer at the Campo auction house in Antwerp, Belgium, under No. 429 on October 24, 2000, and was sold for 8,924 euros excluding sales premium. Modern giltwood frame. Good condition. 5,800 euros