Ferme sur les hauteurs de Vichy

Details

Jean-François Millet (Gruchy 1814-1875 Barbizon)
Ferme sur les hauteurs de Vichy
black chalk, pen and brown ink, watercolour heightened with white on light brown paper
5 1/8 x 8 1/8 in. (131 x 207 mm.)

Provenance

The artist's studio stamp (L. 1460).
Alexis Rouart, Paris, until 1911.
with Hector Brame, Paris, by 1938.
The mounter's mark of A. Stoll (L. 2786c).

Exhibited

Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, J.-F. Millet, 1887, no. 70.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Sale room notice

Dr Alexandra Murphy has confirmed the attribution to Millet on the basis of a photograph and suggests the possibility that this watercolour may have been one of three bought by Edgar Degas at the sale of Millet's studio. We are grateful for Dr Murphy's help in cataloguing this drawing.

Lot Essay

One of a series of drawings and landscape sketches made by Millet on his journeys with his wife to Vichy in Central France in the summers of 1866-68 (for others see A. Murphy, Jean-François Millet, exhib. cat., Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1984, nos. 117-127). Away from his studio, where he was distracted by his unfinished figure paintings, he was able to concentrate on landscapes. Almost two hundred drawings and watercolours resulted from this relaxation, of which perhaps as many as fifty were worked up into paintings and pastels (A. Murphy, op. cit., p. 177).

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