Blossoms, Chantemesle

A reprise of one of Conder’s favourite motifs, and one so poignantly rich in symbolism for Conder, the blossoming tree, which he had first painted in a series of works in Victoria, Australia, in 1888. He returned to the motif at his most fluent in his first canvases painted on his excursions out of Paris into the French countryside, as well as on his Algerian outing, in the early 1890s. Conder was at Chantemesle, La Roche Guyon, on the Seine, first in May 1892, staying there with his lover Germaine. His four canvases of Chantemesle subjects exhibited at the New Salon in 1893 increased his reputation and led to his becoming an Associate Member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He returned to this favourite area through the 1890s.

Galbally dates the present picture ‘Showing the garden and studio of the house at Chantemesle where Conder stayed with his friends Mr and Mrs Arthur Blunt’ to 1897-98: ‘The spring and summer of 1898 were spent, rather precariously, in and around Chantemesle. Will [Rothenstein] continued to look after his affairs in London, and Conder kept up a lively correspondence with him: ‘You will be very pleased to hear that I am not dead but am enjoying the heat & purest of country air at the place on the Seine near my old haunts., … the Spring is here – the corn is yellowing – the nightingale sings in the garden of this house I occupy with my friend Blunt & we work hard and are cheerful when it doesn’t rain.’ (A. Galbally, Charles Conder the last bohemian, Melbourne, 2002, p.191)