Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1545173
Madame Guillaumin Reading, c. 1885 Signed 'Guillaumin' lower right Oil on canvas 25 ¾ x 21 ½ in, 65.5 x 54.5 cm Provenance Private Collection, New York Connaught Brown, London (acquired from the above in 2007) Private Collection, Austria (acquired from the above in 2010) Literature This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by D. Fabiani and G. Serret and dated 31 March 1977 Guillaumin met Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne at the Académie Suisse in 1861. He became a key member of the Impressionist group, contributing to the first revolutionary Impressionist exhibition in 1874 alongside Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Degas and Sisley. Madame Guillaumin Reading is a stunningly evocative demonstration of the central, Impressionist spirit of the artist's oeuvre. The work was completed just one year before the final Impressionist Exhibition that took place in Paris in 1886. The painting displays Guillaumin's masterly understanding of the palette that soon after prompted the famous critic Félix Fénéon to name him the "furious colourist". Indeed, Guillaumin's definitive quality within the Impressionists was his challenging of the school's muted tones in favour of an intrepid use of bright hues. Here, the artist's tender depiction of his wife is imbued with a sensitivity that goes beyond the formal qualities of the work. The painting exudes Guillaumin's delight in expressing the beauty of the natural world, and of his wife as she muses over a book. Guillaumin has captured a real sense of a relationship and a story to be told in this highly personal work. Jean Baptiste Armand Guillaumin 1841-1927 2