Carl Conrad Stilling

Carl Conrad Stilling (Danish, 1874–1938).

This work is offered unframed.

An early 20th century Impressionist oil landscape, showing a view of a country lane in the old town of Hyères on the French Riviera. The late afternoon sun is reflected brilliantly from a long stucco garden wall that recedes towards a red-tiled roof, as a farmer's horse-drawn cart moves lazily away from the viewer.

Carl Conrad Stilling first studied at Copenhagen's Technical School before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1893–1906), where he studied under the Realist Axel Helsted. In 1899, he also took classes in Italy at the Academia in Florence.

For over 30 years, Stilling traveled widely throughout Europe painting lyrical Impressionist landscapes that he exhibited widely and with success, including regularly at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition (1902–05, 1909) and the Kunstnerforen (1921, 1924, 1926, 1930) among numerous other locations. His travels and studies took him to Holland (1899, 1904, 1914); Belgium (1899); Paris (1899, 1911, 1921); Brittany (1924, 1926); Southern France (1927, 1929); Italy (1899, 1929, 1931, 1933); Switzerland (1909); Germany (1910, 1929) and Corsica (1928), the year that this work was painted.

Stilling was particularly drawn to the South of France and Brittany, areas to which he frequently returned to record those qualities of atmospheric light that had attracted so many of his peers. These areas increasingly drew his attention as he continued to practice the principles of Modernism to which he had first been exposed in his early, and formative, visits to Paris. Carl Stilling was 54 years old when he painted this serene and jewel-like view of Hyères, the oldest and most southerly resort of the Côte d’Azur.

Signed and inscribed lower right; dated lower left; titled verso