Provenance

Etienne Bignou

French

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Three light-skinned girls hold hands to create a loose ring with their arms extended, in a grassy field in this horizontal painting. All three girls wear white headdresses, ankle-length, long-sleeved dresses, and clogs. Each dress has a wide white collar that extends beyond the shoulders. A ruby-red flower is pinned to the brown apron on the two girls whose fronts we see. Their features and clothing are outlined in cobalt blue and filled in with parallel, often visible strokes. To our left, a girl stands with both arms stretched out, one holding the hand of the girl next to her, to our right. The first girl looks off into the distance to our left with dark eyes. She has a button nose, and her peach-colored lips curve down at the corners. Her auburn-red hair is tucked back under her bonnet. Her dress is navy blue, and her stockings are brick red. She steps forward onto her right foot, to our left. The second girl, holding the first girls’ hand, stands facing our right in profile, looking slightly down. Her features are indistinct, but she also seems to have a snub nose and her pink lips are closed. She has blond hair and an emerald-green dress. Her hazelnut-brown stockings match her apron. She also steps forward, but onto her left foot. The third girl stands with her back to us, seen between the first two, as she looks over her shoulder to our right in profile. Her left arm is also raised but her right arm is hidden behind the second girl. The third girl has brown hair and a pointed nose. Her dress is black, and she steps forward onto her right foot. A small dog with brown and white speckled fur sniffs at the grass to our right of the girls. Piles of long grass or hay dot the lemon-lime green field, which dips down behind the girls and to our left to meet a low, stone gray wall. Buildings in plum purple, ivory white, terracotta orange, and ocean blue span the width of the painting beyond the wall. One narrow spire reaches above the other rooflines. Tall, narrow, dark green trees are interspersed among the buildings, and a hill climbs nearly to the top of the canvas to our left. A few thin slate-gray clouds float across a narrow band of shell-pink sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in lower right corner, “P. Gauguin 88.”
Paul Gauguin, Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven, 1888, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.19

Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven

Paul Gauguin · 1888 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.19
This vertical portrait painting shows the head and shoulders of a person with pale peach skin and an auburn, cheek-length bob hairstyle. The person has high cheek bones, deep pink lips, and an angular, pointed chin. The head is cocked to our left, and almond-shaped eyes are nearly blacked out. The black jacket has lapels over a white, collared, buttoned-up shirt with a crimson-red necktie. Shown against brick-red and black background, the portrait is painted with areas of relatively flat color but with loose brushstrokes that create a textured, mottled effect. The artist signed the work with black paint in the lower right corner: “modigliani.” 
Amedeo Modigliani, Madame Kisling, c. 1917, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.175

Madame Kisling

Amedeo Modigliani · c. 1917 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.175
This painting shows a portrait of a woman, depicted from the thighs up. She is seated with her body and head facing forward. She has pale skin, rounded cheeks with a slight blush, a small, red mouth, thin eyebrows, and lined eyes that slant downward towards her ears. Her brown hair is styled in waves, framing her face. She is wearing a black dress with a V-neck, and in her ears are dangling gold earrings. Her left hand is on her hip, with her right resting on her crossed legs, a cigarette between her fingers. She is sitting on a red wooden chair, and the background is a vibrant red color with earthy yellow sections in the top left and right corners.
Amedeo Modigliani, Madame Amédée (Woman with Cigarette), 1918, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.172

Madame Amédée (Woman with Cigarette)

Amedeo Modigliani · 1918 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.172
We look across river at a bridge with a city skyline beyond in this stylized, horizontal landscape, which is painted entirely with broad, visible brushstrokes in vivid, saturated colors. The river spans nearly the width of the canvas, and the riverbank is lined to our left with a row of several buildings between us and the bridge. Those buildings are outlined with royal blue and filled in with mostly flat areas of color in coral pink, mint green, tangerine orange, and pinkish tan. Letters across the top of the building farthest from us reads “BREVER.” Eight boats are tied up at the foot of the buildings. The pointed hulls of three extend into the scene from the lower left corner, painted in marigold orange and outlined in cobalt blue. Five more boats, with rounded prows and hulls and painted with lapis blue and muted aqua, line up like a row of empty shoes. The bridge runs from behind the tallest building to our left across and off the canvas, and is painted with deep lapis blue with crimson-red Xes crisscrossing the span to suggest trestles. The front faces of the pilings below are also highlighted with red. The river fills most of the bottom half of the painting. The water to our left is painted as a field of coral pink with a few, short horizontal baby and cobalt-blue strokes, suggesting reflections of the boats and a bridge piling. A narrow band of kiwi green and sky blue lines the pink field to our right. Next to it, the water is painted as short, horizontal, disconnected strokes and dots mostly in bumblebee yellow with some strokes in bubblegum pink and pale burnt orange, all against the off white of the canvas below. The final zone, to our right, is more densely painted with short dashes in indigo, turquoise, and aqua blue. Beyond the bridge, the skyline is painted in silhouette with spiky spires to our left in mint green and a mass of shorter buildings in periwinkle blue to our right. Four clouds of pale yellow billow off the bridge in front of the skyline. The sky above is painted with short and long vertical strokes of butter yellow, rose pink, pale orange, and a few areas of watermelon pink. The artist signed the work with cobalt-blue paint near the lower left corner: “a derain.”
André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, oil on canvas, John Hay Whitney Collection, 1982.76.3

Charing Cross Bridge, London

André Derain · 1906 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1982.76.3
A pale-skinned young girl with blond hair, wearing a blue dress, stands in a garden in this vertical painting. The girl and background are painted with blended strokes, giving the scene and especially the girl a soft look. She faces our right and stands in the middle of the composition. Her shoulder-length cloud of hair is topped with a red bow, and long bangs frame her round face. Under faint brows, her sapphire-blue eyes look to our right. She has a petite nose, and her coral-pink mouth turns up in a slight smile. Her cobalt-blue dress is trimmed with wide, blue-white lace on the neckline, across the bottom hem, and down the front to either side of a row of white buttons. The white edges her petticoats come down to just below her knees, peeking out from under the flaring skirt. She wears white socks over blue ankle boots, which also have a row of white buttons down the side we can see. Her near hand is raised with her index finger hooked in the handle of a green watering can, and she holds two daisies by her side in her other hand. She stands on a path flecked with ivory white, pale purples, greens, and pink that curves up and to her left. A bush with emerald and pine-green leaves dotted with pink blooms fills the lower left corner. Behind her, green grass runs back to meet a profusion of pink, purple, and poppy-red plants and flowers that run along the top edge of the composition. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Renoir. 76.”
Auguste Renoir, A Girl with a Watering Can, 1876, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.206

A Girl with a Watering Can

Auguste Renoir · 1876 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.206
Shown from the lap up, a man wearing an ash-brown suit and top hat sits turned mostly away from us, next to a round table, facing a group of at least three women farther back in the room in this vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible, mostly vertical strokes, and most of the forms, clothing, and objects are outlined in cobalt blue. Sitting in a wooden, ladderback chair, the man’s body takes up the bottom right quadrant of the painting. His skin is painted pale turquoise. His face turns away from us so we see the tip of his nose and the lines of his cheek and double chin. He has short brown hair under his top hat. He holds a silver-topped cane in one hand, which rests in his lap. A glass with some clear liquid sits on the table in front of him, to our left. A peanut-brown column spans the height of the painting just beyond him, near the right edge of the composition. Three women stand closely together in the near distance, in the upper left corner of the painting. At the front of the trio, a woman with a peach-colored face wears an indigo-blue mask over her eyes. A few swipes of paint indicate blond hair, possibly pulled up. She faces our right in profile and stands with her right hand, closer to us, planted on her hip. She wears a bubblegum-pink sleeveless top and form-fitting pants. The skin of her arm and the skin on the face of the woman standing just beyond her is a cream-white tinged with blue. That second woman faces our right in profile, and her blond hair is either short or also pulled up. A teal-green strap of a low-cut dress crosses over the shoulder we can see. A third woman stands in front of this pair, between them and the seated man. She faces away from us and wears a cotton candy-pink robe and hood that completely covers her body. The wall at the back of the room is painted with areas of brick red, moss green, and a grayish mauve pink.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Maxime Dethomas, 1896, oil on cardboard, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.219

Maxime Dethomas

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1896 · oil on cardboard ·  Accession ID  1963.10.219
Shown from the lap up, a woman with peach-colored skin sits leaning sideways against the back of a wooden chair with her head tilted to our left on her long neck in this vertical, stylized portrait. The painting is done mostly with areas of mottled color outlined in delicate black lines. The top of her head and her left elbow, on our right, are slightly cut off by the edges of the canvas. Her copper-red hair is parted in the middle and puffs down and around her hears. Her elongated oval face and delicate features are simply drawn. Pencil-thin, nearly straight, grayish eyebrows float above almond-shaped eyes entirely filled in with black. A faint gray line forms her elongated nose. Her small rose pink, pursed lips are slightly darker than the faint blush on her cheeks. Her jet-black, long-sleeved dress has a high waist and a wide, diaphanous gray collar at the rounded neckline. Her left elbow, on our right, drapes over the top of the spindles making up the back of the chair so her hand rests near the gray collar. Her other arm rests by her side. The background is a foggy swirl of sage green and elephant gray. Two faint, thin, parallel, horizontal gray lines that run across the background may suggest a baseboard.
Amedeo Modigliani, Woman with Red Hair, 1917, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.176

Woman with Red Hair

Amedeo Modigliani · 1917 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.176
A young woman reclines and reads a book near a stream that winds through a wooded landscape in this horizontal painting. Painted with rich pine green, trees tower along the riverbanks and fill most of the painting. The olive-colored water seems to have cut straight down over time, creating high banks painted with tones of caramel and honey brown. Steel and slate-gray boulders are scattered in intervals near the river. Deep in the hazy blue distance, mountains line the horizon, which comes halfway up the composition. In the lower left corner of the painting, close to the river, the woman lies on her stomach as she props herself up on her elbows to read. She has pale white skin and her long, dark hair falls over her shoulders. Her white shirt hangs low over her shoulders, and her rose-pink skirt falls just short of her bare feet.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Forest of Fontainebleau, 1834, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.109

Forest of Fontainebleau

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot · 1834 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.109
An older man, a woman, and a child who holds a chair upside-down on his head stand near each other in this vertical painting, which is made with dabs and strokes of muted grays, cream white, and golden tan. The scene is lit from our right, creating deep shadows. At the center of the composition, the man has light gray skin and he stands with his body angled slightly to our left, as he looks in that direction. His eyes are shaded and he has a round nose over a mouth mostly covered in shadow. His hat has two peaks like rounded horns and a smoke-gray scarf wraps around his neck. He wears a loose, cream-white shirt under a slate-blue jacket, and dark pants. His feet are loosely painted so it is difficult to tell if he is barefoot or if his shoes are sketchily painted. A rolled-up mat held under one arm and a small wooden box held with the other hand are loosely painted and nearly lost in shadow. To our right, just behind the man, the child wears a parchment-white, full body leotard with long sleeves and pants. His pale peach-colored hands grip the ladder back of the chair, which rests upside down on his head and casts his face into shadow. To our left, the woman is mostly in shadow. A peach-colored oval suggests her face and she wears a dark garment, perhaps a shawl, over a coffee-brown, ankle-length skirt. Her weight rests on her right foot, to our left, and she holds a large drum by her other side. The background is painted indistinctly with an area of bone white in the upper left corner, which stretches nearly across the composition along the top. Most of the rest is darker sand brown with a small patch of turquoise-blue paint near the upper right corner.
Honoré Daumier, Wandering Saltimbanques, 1847/1850, oil on wood, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.14

Wandering Saltimbanques

Honoré Daumier · 1847/1850 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1963.10.14
Shown from the lap up, a person with peach-colored skin sits facing us as he looks down and to our left in this vertical, stylized, portrait painting. The person’s clothing and features are outlined with thin black lines, and areas are filled in with mottled, streaked color painted with visible strokes. The person has a round face with a double chin and a small red mouth. The eyes are painted as slate-blue slivers under thin brows, one of which is cocked. The man’s short black hair is parted to one side and combed across the top of his head. He wears a white cravat tied at his neck under a rust-red jacket or shirt. Two rounded, muted blue forms below suggest crossed knees. The man’s right elbow rests next to his body, and that hand is near his lap. The background is painted with pecan brown on the left third and gray-blue on the right two-thirds.
Amedeo Modigliani, Monsieur Deleu, 1916, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.76

Monsieur Deleu

Amedeo Modigliani · 1916 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.76

Bibliography

1976

  • Cooper, Douglas, introduction. Alex Reid & Lefevre 1926-1976. London, 1976