S otheby’s New York is pleased to present the selling exhibition En Plein Air: Landscapes through the Ages. Fusing historical tradition with contemporary perspectives, this exhibition will showcase works by Gustave Courbet, Charles Ephraim Burchfield, Mary Cassat, Wayne Thiebaud and Shara Hughes. Each piece pays homage to the enduring essence of landscape, capturing the complex and nuanced dimensions of the genre as a method of self-expression, with the artist’s emotions and admiration for their surroundings reflected in their output.
Tracing its origins through centuries, landscape painting unveils profound insights into our relationship with nature and the environment, enriching art history with its exploration of the natural world and its representation. The French term en plein air refers to the practice of painting landscapes directly from nature, an approach that became prominent in the 19th century and was pivotal in shaping modern art, emphasizing the direct engagement with nature, and fostering new artistic techniques and styles. Artists through their distinct visual languages, adeptly capture the environment and the depth of their surroundings, using their knowledge and methods to create impactful works of art that resonate across time and place whilst solidifying their personal experience within the world. This fall season, these works will highlight the brilliance of landscape paintings across a mode of artistic interpretations.
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“I could certainly never mirror nature. I would more like to paint what it leaves with me”
- La Trombe
- The Wheat Reapers, In Picardie (Les Faucheurs de Seigle, en Picardie)
- On the Water (Feeding the Ducks)
- Untitled
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La Trombe
"Talk about drama—whirling spirals of wind and water tear through the sky in Courbet's stormy seascape, observed from the shore. To me this picture is so modern. It's pulsing with a palpable sense of awe and sheer power. It reminds me of Robert Longo's larger-than-life drawings of atomic explosion clouds and giant breaking waves. This is all about the overwhelming, awe-inspiring force of nature and the attempt to capture that raw energy on canvas."
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The Wheat Reapers, In Picardie (Les Faucheurs de Seigle, en Picardie)
"Is he wearing jeans? Probably not, but I am always struck by this laboring figure in the foreground — scythe in hand and swung back before sweeping forward to slice through the stalks of rye right in front of us. This monumental canvas is among the artist's largest and most accomplished works, which he debuted at the Salon of 1877 in Paris — the official state-sponsored exhibition where artists of the day were selected by jury. The subject of gleaners, made popular by artists such as Millet and Breton, would inspire Van Gogh, whose sowers symbolized the incessant cycle of life and rebirth."
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On the Water (Feeding the Ducks)
"This oil sketch by Mary Cassatt capitalizes on the immediacy and fluidity of paint—here so suitable to the watery subject. I am always pulled in by unfinished works because you really get a sense of the artist's hand. A recent exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, focused on Mary Cassatt at work, highlighting both her varied, enterprising, and experimental artistic labor and the various kinds of primarily women's labor—from domestic work to familial care and industrial activity—she showcased over the course of her career. Here, you get the sense of Cassatt's astute sensibilities as a colorist and a graphic artist—the strong use of outline, broad blocks of color, and arrangement of forms bring to mind her groundbreaking work in different print media and pastel."
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Untitled
"I love that Thiebaud has chosen pastel—a medium that took on a new life in the 19th-century—to create a moody, multi-textured landscape that looks like a modern take on Corot, Daubigny, or Courbet, leading Barbizon and Realist painters that inspired the likes of Morisot, Monet, Pissarro and the group of artists that became known as the Impressionists. The abstracted reflection of trees on the bank of a river recall similar scenes made along the Seine by French artists from the 1840s through the turn of the century that captured seemingly mundane moments of everyday life in the midst of extraordinary social, industrial, and ecological change."
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Kathryn Kremnitzer joined Sotheby’s in June 2021. She earned her PhD at Columbia University in 2020 with a dissertation that explored how Édouard Manet worked across media in the 1860s. She was previously Research Associate in the Painting and Sculpture of Europe department at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she worked on Manet and Modern Beauty (2019), Monet and Chicago (2020), and Cezanne (2022), and contributed to the online scholarly catalogue of Manet’s works in the collection. As a Curatorial Assistant at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, she worked on Madame Cézanne (2014) and Tiepolo Caricatures from the Robert Lehman Collection (2014). She specializes in 19th century European painting, particularly French, and works on paper.