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Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection THEODORE ROBINSON (1852-1896) On the Cliff; A...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:300,000.00 - 500,000.00 USD
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection THEODORE ROBINSON (1852-1896) On the Cliff; A...
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
THEODORE ROBINSON
(1852-1896)
On the Cliff; A Girl Sewing, 1887
signed "Th Robinson" (lower right)
inscribed "Dieppe June 25 1887" (lower left)
oil on panel
9 x 12 1/4 in. (22.8 x 31.2 cm)
<p>Estimate: $300,000-500,000 <p> Provenance
The artist Hamline Robinson Mrs. Francis J. Oakes, Jr. Mrs. Oakes Colford, Brookline, MAssachusetts Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York Private Collection, New York Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland, 1979 <p> Exhibited
Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, Exhibition of Paintings by American Impressionists and Other Artists of the Period, 1880-1900, 1932, no. 83 Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, Theodore Robinson 1852-1896, 1946, no. 170 New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., A Gallery Collects, 1977, no. 47 (illustrated) New York, Andrew Crispo Gallery, American Impressionism, 1979, no. 27 Perth, Art Gallery of South Australia; Adelaide, Art Gallery of South Australia; Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria; Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Wellington, New zealand, National Art Gallery, Auckland, New zealand, Auckland City Art Gallery, Christchurch, New zealand, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, America & Europe: A Century of Modern Masters from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 1979-1980, no. 5 (illustrated) Hyogo, Kobe, The Museum of Modern Art; Iwate, The Iwate Prefectural Museum; Saitama, The Museum of Modern Art; Hiroshima, The Hiroshima Prefectural Museum; Kitakyushu, The Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, The Rediscovery of Nature: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Landscape Painting in the West, 1983-1984, no. T73 Kobe, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art; Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum; Tokyo, The Bunkamura Museum of Art; Hiroshima, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Two Hundred Years of American Paintings from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, January 5-August 25, 1991, no. 20 Lausanne, Fondation de l'Hermitage, l'Impressionisme Americain, 2002, cat. no. 35 <p> Literature
Barbara Novak, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Nineteenth-Century American Painting, London, 1986, pp. 298-299, no. 104 (illustrated, p. 299) <p> This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work being compiled by Ira Spanierman and Sona Johnston. <p> On the Cliff was created at a pivotal moment in the life of Theodore Robinson. Painted on the cusp of the artist's transition from tonalism to Impressionism, it was also created in the fever of first love. Soon after this June day in 1887, Robinson would encounter the impressionist Claude Monet and begin a new and rewarding chapter in his professional life. His romantic life would not turn out so well: His beloved Marie, depicted here reading on the hillside, would reject all of his marriage proposals and Robinson would die alone at the age of 44. <p>By 1887, Robinson had had considerable artistic experience on both sides of the Atlantic. He had studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and in Paris under Carolus-Duran and Benjamin Constant. In 1879, during a visit to Italy, he had met James McNeill Whistler and, although their acquaintance was short, Whistler's distinctive, close tonal harmonies had a lasting influence on Robinson's work. During a short sojourn in the States in the early 1880s, Robinson worked on mural paintings under the painter John LaFarge, then returned to France in 1884, working at Barbizon, Dieppe, and Giverny. Of the many American painters who gravitated toward Giverny in those years, only Theodore Robinson became the close friend and protégée of its resident maître, Claude Monet. Soon after the two painters met in 1888, Robinson began to experiment with the light effects and visual abstractions of Impressionism. <p>But Robinson never went all the way in the direction his friend pointed. Solid, sculptural forms and muted harmonies of color continued to be part of even his most Impressionist works, creating the artistic tension that gives his oeuvre its power. These forms and colors are present in On the Cliff painted at Dieppe in 1887, composed in an elegant, Whistlerian mood. The tones of green, mauve, and pink that suffuse so many of Robinson's paintings are here, as are the diagonals - jutting roofs, thrusting walls and sloping hillsides - that anchor so many of his post-Monet compositions. The subject matter - a woman in a landscape-is also quintessential Robinson. In this work she is specific - his Marie, aloof and untouchable, seated so high on her hillside that she looks down on the roof of the loftiest tower in the village. But Robinson would return frequently to this general theme - depicting the eternal woman, forever detached from the viewer, absorbed in her task, surrounded by the beauty of nature. <p>A pastel of the same subject, apparently executed at the same time, is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
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