CHARLES CONDER

Peyton Skipwith, London
Probably purchased from Christie, Manson and Woods, London by Len Voss Smith on behalf of Mr Davies in 1976
Estate of the Late John Dowell Davies AO; thence by descent to the present owner
Private collection, Tasmania

Charles Conder, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, September 1967, cat. 17 (as Landscape: Vétheuil)
Impressionism, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1974, cat. 108

John House (ed.), Impressionism: Its Masters, its Precursors and its Influence in Britain, Royal Academy, London, 1974, p. 52
Jeremy Maas, Victorian Painters, Barrie and Rockliff, London, 1969 illus. (as 'Landscape: Vétheuil'), p. 253

This work is presented in a gold ornate timber frame with beige linen slip. There is a tiny circular hole lower left against frame rebate. There are a few minor fly spots across the surface. This picture is not lined and appears to have its original stretcher. There is no restoration confirmed by UV inspection.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Like many Parisian students and English and American expatriates in the 1890s, Charles Conder followed in the footsteps of the great Claude Monet, painting plein-air summer landscapes along the lower reaches of the River Seine. Having visited Monet's Giverny and the Norman coast in 1891, Conder returned to the area the following year, spending the early part of the season in the little hamlet of Chantemesle with his mistress Germaine, who appears like a Puvis de Chavannes shepherdess in the misty-symbolist Mayday, (1892, Australian National Gallery). The relationship foundered, however, and Germaine returned to Paris, Conder moving upstream to the next village, Vétheuil. He had previously arranged to take a house there with his friend Louis Anquetin, a young French painter he knew from Cormon's atelier, and the two artists painted (and partied) together for the rest of the summer and into the autumn. Conder completed a dozen or so canvases for the next year's Salon (amongst them the present work), and enjoyed the landscape immensely.

He wrote to his friend William Rothenstein in June describing 'a wonderful subject to paint in the mornings, some oak and willow trees, and a rosy bank that Apollo might have run down to find some live nymphs.'¹ Although the young girl raking hay is more drudge than dryad, there may be a sly classical-sexual allusion in the crescent moon - symbol of the goddess Diana - directly above her head. The presence of Monet can certainly be felt in this painting: in its high-key colour, in the haymaking theme², in the riverside poplars and willows, and even in Vétheuil itself - Monet lived in the village from 1878 to 1881, and his house is just out of view to the right of the distant church tower.

Conder was nevertheless no retinal impressionist, breaking up the picture's surface with dots and dashes of pure colour. Here the field, trees, hill and sky are described in broad, bright zones of subtly-modulated brushwork and melded colours. It is, as his contemporary D. S. McColl was to write of his art in general, 'remarkable...for the beauty of its colour and the poetry of its feeling...artistic in the sense that it is composed and subdued to accord with scheme and sentiment. There are no loose ends, no gossip about things; it is an attempt upon the music of nature.'³ Mary Eagle concurs: 'He painted from nature; but instead of painting face to face, a slave to the weather, time of day and landscape forms, Conder more often than not painted from his ideas, pondering the landscape, still-life and portrait for what they suggested of the grand themes of human mortality.'⁴

A number of his paintings from this summer bear titles marking the passage of time, not only Mayday, but also Juin (Chantemesle) and Juillet (Vétheuil)⁵, and the present work. As individual works and as a collective statement, they convey a strong sense of evanescence, of the beautiful fleetingness of life.

On the question of passing time, it can be noted that there has been some dispute over how long Conder stayed in Normandy in 1892. According to Ann Galbally, he was back in Paris in late August, but Mary Eagle suggests November.⁶ The present work would seem to indicate that he stayed at least a few weeks into the autumn - the crescent moon would not have been visible until the third week of September.

The present work has a distinguished English provenance, having been for many years in the collection of Peyton Skipwith, art historian, connoisseur, and a Director of the Fine Art Society, London.

1. Conder to Will Rothenstein, 16 June 1892, quoted in John House (ed.), Impressionism: Its Masters, its Precursors and its Influence in Britain, Royal Academy, London, 1974, p. 52
2. Conder had greatly admired Monet's Haystacks in Paris in 1891, and was later to paint his own Hayfield, France, 1894 (Art Gallery of South Australia)
3. D. S. McColl, Spectator, 24 June 1893
4. Mary Eagle, The Oil Paintings of Charles Conder in the Australian National Gallery, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1997, p. 71
5. Both works exhibited at the Societé National des Beaux-Arts (the 'New' Salon) in May 1896
6. Ann Galbally, Charles Conder: the Last Bohemian, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003, p. 102, Mary Eagle, op. cit., p. 76