Impressionist & Modern Art Evening

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Lot 5
  • 5

Paul-César Helleu

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Description

  • Paul-César Helleu
  • LA GARE SAINT LAZARE
  • signed Helleu (lower left)
  • oil on canvas
  • 103 by 159.5cm.
  • 40 1/2 by 62 3/4 in.

Provenance

Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l'Ouest Parisien (commissioned from the artist)
Private Collection, Dordogne (acquired circa 1900)
Private Collection, Paris (1994)
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 27th June 2000, lot 9
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Exhibited

Paris, Salon, 1885
Berlin, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Die Zweite Schöpfung, Bilder der industriellen Welt vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart, 2002, no. 93, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Literature

Boldini, Helleu, Sem: Protagonisti e Miti della Belle Epoque (exhibition catalogue), Centro per l'Arte Diego Martelli, Castello Pasquini, Castiglioncello, 2006, no. 24, illustrated in colour p. 119

Catalogue Note

In depicting the theme of a railway station, Helleu joins the ranks of great Impressionist painters, who were fascinated with this subject and saw it as an emblem of modern life. Most famously, this theme was painted by Monet, who in 1877 executed a series of views of the Gare Saint Lazare (fig. 1). Like Monet, Helleu depicted the railway tracks surrounded by signal lights and smoke rising from the locomotives, evoking the busy, noisy effect of trains coming and going. Besides the strong echoes of Monet in the dramatic handling of the effects of steam, the treatment of the balcony and the chair in the foreground are also reminiscent of Caillebotte.

The present work was painted by Helleu when in his mid-twenties, circa 1885, and was commissioned by the director of the Western Paris Railway Company. According to Madame Paulette Helleu Howard-Johnston, the artist's daughter, La Gare Saint Lazare was exhibited at the Salon of 1885, where it had a great success among the critics and the public. It was from this point on that Helleu became part of the Impressionist circle.

This work has been requested for the exhibition The Artist and the Railway, to be held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, from April 2008 until January 2009.