WEST JONES ADVISORS

JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE COROT (French, 1797–1875)
Ville-d’Avray – bucheronnes dans une prairie au bord des bois
(Wood gatherers in a meadow, Ville-d’Avray)

Signed “COROT” lower left
oil on canvas, circa 1830–35
12.25 x 15.25 inches
22.25 x 25.75 inches framed

He [Corot] had realised his goal of closing the gap between the empirical freshness of outdoor painting and the organizing principles of classical landscape composition. – Peter Galassi

Painted circa 1830–35 after his return from his first trip to Italy (1825–28) and probably pre-dating his second in the summer of 1834, this is among Corot’s early paintings of the environs of Ville d’Avray, the village to the west of Paris which was to play such a fundamental role in shaping his artistic vision of nature. Corot’s father had purchased a house and land in the village on 17 March 1817. While Corot never became the master of the Maison Corot, which passed to his sister upon his mother’s death in 1851, he often stayed there for extended periods between his peregrinations in France and Italy, occupying a room that was later built under the eaves.

Ville d’Avray and the immediate countryside around it played a fundamental role in shaping Corot’s artistic vision of nature as a gentle and tranquil subject, in contrast to the more dramatic, romantic landscapes of his contemporary Théodore Rousseau, for example, who displayed a fascination for the wild and thickly wooded forest around the village of Barbizon. Indeed the composition references the picturesque tradition inherited from Poussin and that the Neoclassical painters including Corot’s teachers, Achille-Etna Michallon and Jean-Victor Bertin, continued to champion.

Yet at the same time works like the present were as modern in their execution as they were escapist in their subject. Corot’s observation of light based on sketches made en plein air, and his ability to render beautiful, clear light delineated by an economic use of colour and brushwork, make him an important precursor of what Edmond Duranty in 1876 termed “The New Painting,” in other words Impressionism, the roots of which, he claimed, “lie in the work of the great Corot.”

Catalogue Raisonné
A. Robaut, L’œuvre de Corot, Paris 1965, vol. II, pp. 102–3, no. 286, reproduced.

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WILLIAM BRADFORD (American, 1823–1892)
Thunderstorm

Signed "W Bradford" on lower right; identified on presentation plaque
oil on board
12 1/16 x 17 5/8 inches
17 15/16 x 23 3/8 x 2 3/16 inches framed

Provenance:
A prominent Greenwich, CT private collection

Tutored in the Dutch marine tradition, American marine artist William Bradford was also strongly influenced by Robert Salmon and Fitz Henry Lane, with whom he came to share many stylistic qualities. As his career evolved, Bradford ventured to the exotic territories of the Labrador and Greenland coasts, producing brilliant photographs and paintings of those desolate, alien landscapes that thrilled contemporary audiences. His style became more open and grandiose as his popular success increased, but he never strayed from the realist foundation of his earlier work. In the words of John Wilmerding, Bradford “is equal to Lane and Salmon in his feeling for the fluidity of water, luminosity of light, and precision of drawing.”

In the tradition of Constable, Turner and other artists, Bradford produced a range of sketches and studies on paper and board of cloud formations over ocean and land, with expansive skies set above low flat horizons. Thunderstorm offers a virtuoso example of Bradford’s ability to create mood and movement in a dramatic setting in which the approaching banks of storm clouds begin to weigh ominously over a still peaceful ocean.

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JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER (American, 1834–1903)
The Thames Set

Arriving in Paris in 1855, Whistler met leading artists of the realist circle and was himself a leading figure in the Etching Revival. The flexible medium of etching, which reached a peak in the hands of Rembrandt, had fallen into decline until the mid-nineteenth century, when it was rediscovered as a means of personal expression.

In the late 1850s, Whistler worked extensively in printmaking in both London and Paris. During this period, the artist experimented with etching techniques while staying in London, visiting his half-sister Deborah and her husband, the surgeon and etcher Sir Francis Seymour Haden, whose Old Master print collection fascinated Whistler.

In 1859, Whistler moved to London, his home for the next forty years, with periods in Paris. At that time, he began a new series of etchings of the decrepit docks and wharfs on the Thames in East London. They would be published with other works in 1871 as the Thames Set.

JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER (American, 1834–1903)
Eagle Wharf

Signed and dated "Whistler / 1859" on lower center within the matrix
etching on Japanese tissue
5 3/8 x 8 3/8 inches
13 3/16 x 17 5/16 inches framed

In Eagle Wharf, published in the “Thames Set” in 1871, the deck of a barge with a battened-down hatch stretches across the foreground. A boy sits on the hatch, facing front, hands on knees, his feet resting against one of the battens. He wears a buttoned jacket with broad lapels and a peaked cap. Behind and to left of the barge is a stretch of foreshore with planks, duckboards, and a boat (with a small hut on top of it) on rollers.

On the wharves to left are derricks, with men loading and unloading barges. A four-storey warehouse at far left bears the sign of 'TYZAC, WHITELEY & Co.' Next, a narrow three-storey building with two bow-windows, and figures on a balcony, belongs to 'W. BROWN, SAIL MAKER, SHIP OWNER'. Then, a warehouse of some six storeys is labelled 'EAGLE WHARF'. At this point a narrow jetty juts into the river, with sailing ships and barges moored alongside. Beyond it, on the left there are steep-roofed buildings and some building construction. In the distance to right there are sailing and steam-ships on the river, with more warehouses and docks in the distance.

JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER (American, 1834–1903)
St. James Street

Etching and drypoint, 1878
State IV/IV
12 x 6 1/2 inches
9 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches framed

One of the main streets in the district of St James’, St. James Street was home to several famous gentlemen's clubs, such as Brooks's, the Carlton Club and White's.

St James's Palace was built by Henry VIII, between 1531 and 1536, and served as a royal residence for over 300 years (although following the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, the Sovereign has lived at Buckingham Palace). The Chapel Royal, the gatehouse, and some turrets are among surviving remnants of the original red-brick building.

Since Whistler worked directly on the copper plate, St James’ Street as printed showed the actual view in reverse. This printed image was again reversed for reproduction in Vanity Fair so that it looked exactly like the scene.

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PAUL GAUGUIN (French, 1848-1903)
La Femme aux Figues (Woman with Figs)

First published in the album, Germinal, in 1899, inscribed in the plate, upper left "Chez Seguin à St. Julien", (Mongan, Kornfeld & Joachim 25), pencil inscription on mat states this print was pulled in 1912 before the cancellation of the plate.

etching
10.5 x 16.5 inches (plate), 14.75 x 22 inches (sheet)
matted and unframed

The artist Armand Seguin (1869-1903) was a close friend of Gauguin during the late 1880s and early 1890s. Based on the etched inscription upper left, “Chez Seguin à St. Julien,” the scene takes place at Seguin’s Breton home in Pouldu. Current scholarship regarding authorship for the print favors Gauguin, in its similarities to other of his Breton female portrait compositions. Woman with Figs combines the distinctive calligraphy of Séguin's foliage with the figure style of Gauguin and may represent the product of a true collaboration.