97 - Paule Gobillard

Paule Gobillard (French, 1867-1946) Jeune Fille au Chapeau de Paille dans le Jardin à Givry, Bourgogne, 1898 watercolor and pencil on paper sheet: 10 5/8 x 7 5/8 in. (27 x 19.4 cm) This lot is located in Philadelphia. Framed: 14 x 12 1/2 in. Sheet is hinged to backmat on the upper right and left verso corners. One pinpoint fill with associated inpainting in the center right, to the right of the woman's arm, only visible upon close examination. Very slight toning to the extreme edges. Otherwise appears in overall good and stable condition. Additional images available upon request. We would like to thank Mme Dominique d'Arnoult for her assistance with the authentication and cataloguing of the present lot. Provenance: Eric Gillis Fine Art, Brussels (as by Julie Manet (French, 1878-1966) and titled Portrait de Paule Gobillard en Extérieur, 1897). Acquired from the above, 2017. Lot Note: Young Girl in a Straw Hat in the Garden at Givry, Burgundy, 1898 is by Paule Gobillard, niece of Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). Gobillard received her training as a painter alongside her aunt, who referred her to Henri Gervex to acquire the fundamentals of the craft. It was as Gervex's student that she began exhibiting at the Salon de l’Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs. In 1891, Gobillard exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants, which she continued to do until 1912. She entered the Salon d'Automne in 1904 and exhibited there regularly until her death in 1946. The present composition can be compared to Gobillard’s painting of the same subject, titled The Straw Hat, 1898 (Paris, Aguttes, sale of November 28, 2024, Lot 33). In both the watercolor and the painting, the model, who wears the same dress and hat in both, is seated in a garden before a landscape opening onto the horizon and sky. She touches the brim of her hat and is seemingly lost in contemplation. A bouquet of red flowers sits on her lap and provides a bright focal point at the center of the composition. The watercolor can also be compared to another watercolor, signed with Paule Gobillard's initials and dated P. G. / 1898 (Paris, Beaussant-Lefèvre, sale of May 5, 2023, lot 200, as Jeannie Valéry and Jeanne Baudot in the garden at Louveciennes). The work, now faded, has been mistakenly located at Jeanne Baudot's home in Louveciennes (Julie Manet does not mention such a stay in her journal in 1898). More likely, it illustrates a stay at the Deanery of Givry, in Burgundy, described at length by Julie from August 25 to September 7, 1898 in her journal. Under the guidance of their new friend Jeanne Baudot—whom their painting teacher Pierre-Auguste Renoir had introduced to them—Julie and her cousins ​​Jeannie and Paule Gobillard were invited to the Clément home. Both watercolors illustrate the same landscape in the background, the same tree silhouette, the same palette, and the same paper size, which seem to indicate the same date and location. It is not strictly speaking a portrait, but a figure that may have been painted from one of the young women present in the household, perhaps Jeanne Clément, a pianist and student of Pugno, whose "Marie Antoinette-style sheer kerchief over a pinkish-orange dress," they admired (Julie Manet, Journal, August 27, 1898). Paule Gobillard then revisited her watercolor, painted from life, to create a studio painting intended for exhibition. Pierre-Auguste Renoir had taken over from his friend Berthe Morisot regarding the artistic education of young women after Morisot’s death in 1895. The art of watercolor, here characterized by its delicacy and transparency, is part of the development of the eye.