Additional Images

Provenance:

First sold in Paris in 1975;
Sold at Sotheby’s, New York, May 4, 1979, Lot 276;
From whom it was presumably purchased by Dr. Gerald Weisbrod of Weisbrod Antiques, Toronto;
The Estate of Dr. Gerald Weisbrod, Toronto

Literature:

W. M. M. “Gaston La Touche.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 8, no. 4, 1921, pp. 69–70, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25136475.

The complete oil on canvas of “Sur le Port des Saints-Pères” is illustrated in Henri Frantz’s book, “Gaston La Touche” published in 1913, illustrated in black and white, Cat. No. XIV.

Exhibited:

Reportedly exhibited in a special Van Gogh exhibition (possibly the complete painting before it was cut down).

Note:

We are grateful to Roy Brindley and Selina Baring MacLennan for their assistance in cataloguing this lot. They were excited to discover that it has been held in the collection of the late Dr. Gerald Weisbrod of Toronto since it appeared at Sotheby’s auction in 1979. Previously, they had only a black and white image of this painting to be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné which Brindley and Baring Maclennan are currently preparing. According to Brindley, the present canvas is a reduced version, cut down from the left side of the original, larger canvas by Gaston La Touche entitled “Sur le Pont des Saints-Peres” and illustrated in the book “Gaston la Touche” by Henri Frantz published in 1913. He also notes that the clock on the church has been painted out. The signature may have been added to the lower left step after the work was reduced. It is not known if La Touche reduced the work himself or if it was done after his death. The two experts have come across a few other paintings which have also been cut down.

Painter, draughtsman and pastellist, La Touche was above all an experimental artist who explored a range of styles throughout his career. Beginning his career as a realist, after 1890, the artist began exploring the idealism for which he is best known. The Cleveland Museum of Art describes La Touche as “a modernist, in that he used all the tricks and subtleties of modern technique, but his subjects were generally phrased in the graceful idiom of the eighteenth century. He reconquered the charm of Watteau and Fragonard and reclothed the classic myths of Boucher in modern guise.”(1) These idyllic scenes found their roots in the French countryside, particularly Normandy at Flers de L'Orne, where he summered. Again to quote the Cleveland Museum, “his subjects are always filled with intense vitality. He painted the world as he saw it and found it a fairyland. He rediscovered the poetry of existence for those who can and will see…He was a decorative artist at all times, but he never lost his touch on reality.”

While La Touche socialised with many of the members of the Impressionist group, he forged his own artistic path apart from them – though they all shared a similar preoccupation with the effects and possibilities of colour and light. Like his Impressionist peers, La Touche is similarly remembered for his virtuosity as a colourist, though it must be said that he drew greater influence stylistically from the fantasy worlds conjured up by the Rococo painters of the 18th century.

La Touche exhibited his work regularly at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the Société des Peintres et Sculpteurs and at the Société de la Peinture à l’Eau, the latter which he had founded in 1906, and of which he served as President.