Arcachon in good weather
Arcachon in fine weather (French: Marine à Arcachon or Arcachon, beau temps ) is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet from 1871 . It shows a view of the sea on Arcachon Beach . The 25 × 42 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, belongs to the collection of the Denver Art Museum .
Image description
The painting Arcachon in fine weather is a landscape picture . With a few quick brushstrokes, Manet sketched the view from the beach in the foreground over the Bay of Arcachon to the island Île aux Oiseaux opposite . The shoreline extends from the lower left edge of the picture diagonally to the right to the Arcachon development that begins there. The sandy beach is painted in yellow and brown tones, and there is a few white paint. Two dark brown objects on the right edge could be keeled boats. To the left of it, at the transition to the water, horizontal brown brushstrokes may indicate a boat lying on the beach. In the middle of the beach, two people are depicted with a few dark brushstrokes. The standing figure seems to be looking at the sea, while the person kneeling to her left may be busy with some work. The place Arcachon on the right edge of the picture is only indistinctly recognizable due to Manet's fleeting style of painting. Directly on the edge is a pointed roof with a French tricolor . In front of it there is a tower-like structure on the left below, on which there are various masts. These could serve as a sign system for shipping and signal wind strength or tide level . The structural situation directly on the sea, where wooden structures are supposed to protect the shore, is unclear. The sea is represented by long horizontal brushstrokes in varied colors. The water appears in different shades of blue and gray, the crests of waves and spray are kept in white. There are several sailing boats at sea, two of which are on the right just off the Arcachon shore. To the left of the center of the picture is another boat with a striking red hull, near which Manet has placed a few birds. He has sketched a swimming bird with a small white dot and a long, thin line; at a distance he shows a flying bird with two more lines. On the horizon, the sandy beach of the Île aux Oiseaux is indicated with thin yellowish lines. The area above is covered by the white-blue sky with hazy clouds. The lively brushwork on the surface of the water and on the beach in the foreground, the foaming waves and the inflated sails illustrate the windy weather on a spring day on the Atlantic. The picture is signed lower right with “Manet”.
Manet in Arcachon
The reason for Edouard Manet's stay in Arcachon was the troubled political situation in Paris after the Franco-Prussian War . During the war, faced with the advancing enemy armies, he had sent his family to Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the Pyrenees on September 8, 1870 . Manet's mother, his wife Suzanne and their son Léon Leenhoff spent the war months there in safety. Manet, who had served as a National Guard, left Paris after the fighting ended on February 12, 1871, and went to his family. Due to the news from the French capital, Manet decided not to return for the time being and instead to wait for further developments in the province. The Manet family first traveled from Oloron-Sainte-Marie to Bordeaux , where they stayed for a week. They arrived in Arcachon on March 1, 1871 and stayed for a month. Meanwhile, the Paris Commune began on March 18, 1871 , delaying Manet's return to Paris for several weeks.
The former fishing village of Arcachon had developed into a seaside resort with numerous guest houses after the railroad was connected in 1857. Manet rented a small furnished house for himself and his family from a Dr. Servantie from Bordeaux. The Chalet Servantie , built only 1867-69, stood at the then western end of the city on Avenue Sainte-Marie. It had a terrace from which a view of the Bay of Arcachon and the offshore Île aux Oiseaux was possible. During his stay in Arcachon, Manet painted not only an interior picture, but also a few beach views, which were taken not far from the house directly in front of the motif. These small-format plein air scenes were easy to transport and caused few problems in windy weather. In addition to Arcachon in fine weather, Manet painted the almost equally large picture Seascape in a Storm near Arcachon (private collection). It shows roughly the same beach section, but with a stormy sky.
Provenance
After Manet, the first known owner of the painting Arcachon in good weather was the writer Aurélien Scholl . It then belonged to the Parisian art collector Adolphe Tavernier and later came into the possession of the Bernheim-Jeune art dealer . The picture then ended up in the collection of Dr. Soubies in Paris. The painting was then on the art market for some time and was successively held by the Paris gallery Étienne Bignou , the New York art dealer M Knoedler & Co and the London Lefevre Gallery . The latter sold the picture in March 1933 to a European art collector whose name was unknown. His heirs put the painting Arcachon up for auction on November 4, 2004 in the New York branch of the auction house Sotheby’s when the weather was fine , where it changed hands for US $ 960,000 . The American entrepreneur Frederic C. Hamilton later appeared as the owner , who donated the painting to the Denver Art Museum for an exhibition in 2013 . In 2014 he bequeathed the picture to the museum along with other pictures from his private collection.
literature
- Maria Teresa Benedetti: Manet . Skira, Milan 2005, ISBN 88-7624-472-7 .
- Françoise Cachin : Manet . DuMont, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7701-2791-9 .
- Galerie Matthiessen (ed.): Exhibition Edouard Manet, 1832–1883, paintings, pastels, watercolors, drawings. Matthiessen Gallery, Berlin 1928.
- Christoph Heinrich : Nature as muse, inventing impressionist landscape . Denver Art Museum, Denver 2013, ISBN 978-0-914738-91-6 .
- John Leighton: Edouard Manet – Ocean Impressions . Published for the exhibition Manet at the Sea in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Mercatorfonds, Brussels 2004, ISBN 2-930117-35-4 .
- Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet, catalog raisonné . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-548-36050-5 .
- Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris and Lausanne 1975.
- Ortrud Westheider , Michael Philipp (Hrsg.): Impressionism, the art of the landscape . Catalog for the exhibition at the Museum Barberini Potsdam, Prestel, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-7913-5628-0 .
- Juliet Wilson-Bareau , David Degener: Manet and the Sea . Exhibition catalog Chicago, Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Yale University Press, New Haven 2003, ISBN 0-300-10164-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ There are different German titles for this painting: Arcachon in good weather can be found in Ortrud Westheider, Michael Philipp: Impressionismus, die Kunst der Landschaft , p. 236 and Françoise Cachin: Manet , p. 151. The picture is beautiful weather in Arcachon mentioned in John Leighton: Edouard Manet – Meeresimpressionen , p. 58. The painting is referred to as Arcachon, beautiful weather and alternatively as a seascape near Arcachon in Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet, catalog raisonné , vol. 1, p. 76. In addition, there are the term seascape in Arcachon in Ortrud Westheider, Michael Philipp: Impressionism, the art of landscape , p. 236 and The Arcachon Basin in Galerie Matthiessen: Exhibition Edouard Manet , p. 29.
- ↑ French image titles see Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , p. 152.
- ^ For information on the early provenance, see Maria Teresa Benedetti: Manet , p. 244.
- ↑ Information on the sale of the painting on the website of the auction house Sotheby’s
- ↑ Information about the donation of the painting on the Denver Art Museum website