36 - Armand GUILLAUMIN (Paris 1841–Orly 1927)

Armand GUILLAUMIN (Paris 1841–Orly 1927) The Heights of the Sédelle, Landscape of the Creuse, c. 1895 Oil on canvas 54 x 73 cm Signed lower right: Guillaumin To be included in the second volume of the artist’s Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared by the Guillaumin Committee. A certificate by Dominique Fabiani, Stephanie Chardeau-Botteri, and Jacques de la Béraudière will be provided to the buyer. Provenance: Galerie Aittouarès, Paris Christie’s New York auction, May 14, 2021 Private collection Armand Guillaumin was one of the leading figures of the Crozant School, a group of artists who depicted the landscapes of the Creuse region. He was also a founding member of the Impressionist movement, painting alongside Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, among others. Armand Guillaumin’s career was far from ordinary. From a very young age, while living in Moulins, he began to take an interest in painting. However, after moving to Paris in 1857, and continuing until 1891, he set painting aside to earn a living—first as a clerk in his uncle’s lingerie shop, then for the Paris-Orléans railroad, and even working as a laborer in the evenings for the Department of Public Works. Despite this hard work, he painted tirelessly and exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863, alongside a group of artists soon dubbed the “Impressionists,” and participated in six of the eight Impressionist group exhibitions. Guillaumin was also a close friend of Vincent van Gogh, with whom he shared a style characterized by vivid colors combined with a distinctive brushwork, as evidenced by the lots we are presenting for sale. In 1891, Guillaumin won 100,000 francs in the national lottery and was finally able to leave his job to devote himself full-time to his art. This sum allowed him to settle permanently in the Creuse region. Like Claude Monet, who also painted in the region, Guillaumin often painted the same scene under different weather conditions and at different times of day. What remains constant in Guillaumin’s landscapes of Crozant is the almost total absence of life and human presence, as if the landscape were sufficient in and of itself—in contrast to his earlier urban landscapes. Like Monet, Guillaumin was also fascinated by the region, which for both of them represented the purest form of nature—a region that modernity, progress, and industrialization had not yet encroached upon. The landscape offered spectacular, secluded views in which the artist could paint transcendental depictions of nature through the use of contrasting and complementary colors. The works produced by Guillaumin in the late 1890s would significantly influence the artists of the next generation. Indeed, the evolution of his technique—from his early realist period to his Impressionist approach—placed him at the center of the development of Post-Impressionist art in the years that followed, making him an essential painter of that period.