Charles Giron

Giron Collection
Sale: Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 22 November 1978, lot 79

Paris, Salon des Champs-Elysées, 1883, no. 1060, p. 221, illustrated
Berne, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Charles Giron, 1955, no. 9

Simone Giron, Charles Giron, Geneva, 1955, p. 10, discussed; p. 11 & 13, illustrated 

The canvas is original, with a thick application of adhesive to the reverse and striplining with secondary re-inforcements along the extreme edges. There are circa ten patches on the reverse, two of them corresponding two old repaired tears across the upper right corner. There is some paint loss contemporary to the rolling of the canvas and some old paint loss elsewhere. Several areas of retouching throughout the paint surface are visible under ultra-violet light.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Giron's vast canvas Les deux soeurs reveals the artist as a great nineteenth-century painter of modern life. Suffused with myriad cultural, political and social  undertones, the painting is almost Zolaesque in its depiction of an argument between two sisters in the street – the lower middle-class mother of three pointing her finger accusingly at the younger sister who is passing by in a horse-drawn landau, with all the elegant refineries and silk frou-frous of the fashionable Parisian cocotte.

In an influential essay entitled 'The New Painting' art critic Edmond Duranty had insisted in 1876 on eliminating the divide separating the artist's studio from that of everyday life, urging artists to introduce the 'reality of the street' into their compositions. In Les deux soeurs Giron took up Duranty's challenge. By capturing everyday life in Paris without idealisation, picturesqueness or sentimentality, the present work reflects the early work of French Impressionist painters like Degas, Manet, Caillebotte and Béraud.

The scene takes place in the Place de la Madeleine, near Giron's studio. Eight horses and twenty-seven figures are caught up in this tumultuous study of modern morals and traditions. Though a trenchant and topical image made in the heart of French civilisation, the work betrays a touch of Spanish temperament; traces of Goya's work can be seen in the young boy pulling a rickshaw between the carriage wheels, and the shimmering palette of Velázquez is visible in the vibrant bouquet of the flower vendor.

Charles Giron entered the studio of Menn in Geneva against his parents' wishes. Aged twenty-two he left for Paris, where he became a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel. He started exhibiting at the Paris Salon from 1876 onwards and initially made a name for himself as an accomplished portrait painter. However, Giron's real artistic breakthrough came in 1883, when he exhibited the present work at the annual Salon to great success.