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Lot Essay
Similar to the development of his collegues Jan Sluijters, Piet Mondriaan and Jan Toorop, Leo Gestel decided to turn away from imitating reality in his art around 1908 - 1909. After studying amongst others Paul Signac's divisionism, the works of the French Fauves and of course that of Vincent van Gogh, he came to a very personal variant of what we today call Dutch Luminism. Luminists were not only interested in the rendering of light on the external world, but also in the inner sensation and the emotions induced by light. Precise imitation of the outside world thus was replaced by the expression of colours, appropriate to the impression of the painter while seeing his subject. The technical tools to this end were flattening the composition, leaving out details, exaggeration of the forms of the objects and placing loose brushstrokes next to each other in vivid colours. Luminism caused great sensation during the exhibitions of the painters' society St. Lucas in the period 1908-1910, the absolute climax being the famous separate luminists room in the Stedelijk Museum in the spring of 1909.
Feeling the need to reflect on the original position of his art, Leo Gestel retreated for a while to the rural surroundings of Nijmegen during the autumn of 1909. He had the urge "to work more sensitively" and "to sacrifice the subject to paint in a more spiritual manner" (op.cit. Loosjes-Terpstra 1983, p. 9). More than ever he thought that "art is the psychological and deliberate action of the emotions of a person, or in other words, art is emotion changed into image".(Exh.cat. Laren, p. 26)
The present lot, Herfstdag te Nijmegen, was excecuted during this important period in Gestel's career, as the first version of the famous series of three autumn trees which came into being between 1909 and 1911 (see fig. 1 and 2). These series are generally considered to be the peak of the 'spiritualized' image of nature in the oeuvre of Leo Gestel. The trees demand the central place in the canvases and are rendered in fluent brushstrokes of bright orange and yellow, surrounded by a sky-area of the same lyrical expressive nature. The first signs of outlining the subject to come to a so-called flat composition evading depth, is visible in the present 1909 version. The almost horror-vaccui character of the painting serves this purpose as well. The theme of the isolated tree in a landscape is a subject with a long Dutch tradition. For Mondriaan and Gestel the work of Van Gogh must have been a great source of inspiration.
According to N.H. Wolf, the first biographer of Gestel, the artist painted the two later versions in his studio in Amsterdam, respectively in 1910 and 1911. He found that he had to treat colour and form in a more decorative, that is, more abstract manner. Influenced by the radical Luminism of Piet Mondriaan of 1910, he reviews the Nijmegen tree "by placing the colours next to each other in broad brushstrokes and stripes, red next to blue, blue next to yellow, orange, green and red, each colour on itself, but in correlation though, as it is the case with painting in very pure unmixed colours. In that manner, fully detached by colours seen with the eyes, Gestel truely came to surprising results" (op.cit Loosjes-Terpstra 1983, p. 10). According to Loosjes - Terpstra, Gestel's refined feeling for colour came to its full advantage in his landscape and nature paintings, in which he was obviously more free than in his interiors (op.cit. Loosjes-Terpstra 1983, p. 10). The present lot, Herfstdag te Nijmegen, is a succesful example of this, and is from an art historical point of view of crucial importance for the artist's oeuvre.
Feeling the need to reflect on the original position of his art, Leo Gestel retreated for a while to the rural surroundings of Nijmegen during the autumn of 1909. He had the urge "to work more sensitively" and "to sacrifice the subject to paint in a more spiritual manner" (op.cit. Loosjes-Terpstra 1983, p. 9). More than ever he thought that "art is the psychological and deliberate action of the emotions of a person, or in other words, art is emotion changed into image".(Exh.cat. Laren, p. 26)
The present lot, Herfstdag te Nijmegen, was excecuted during this important period in Gestel's career, as the first version of the famous series of three autumn trees which came into being between 1909 and 1911 (see fig. 1 and 2). These series are generally considered to be the peak of the 'spiritualized' image of nature in the oeuvre of Leo Gestel. The trees demand the central place in the canvases and are rendered in fluent brushstrokes of bright orange and yellow, surrounded by a sky-area of the same lyrical expressive nature. The first signs of outlining the subject to come to a so-called flat composition evading depth, is visible in the present 1909 version. The almost horror-vaccui character of the painting serves this purpose as well. The theme of the isolated tree in a landscape is a subject with a long Dutch tradition. For Mondriaan and Gestel the work of Van Gogh must have been a great source of inspiration.
According to N.H. Wolf, the first biographer of Gestel, the artist painted the two later versions in his studio in Amsterdam, respectively in 1910 and 1911. He found that he had to treat colour and form in a more decorative, that is, more abstract manner. Influenced by the radical Luminism of Piet Mondriaan of 1910, he reviews the Nijmegen tree "by placing the colours next to each other in broad brushstrokes and stripes, red next to blue, blue next to yellow, orange, green and red, each colour on itself, but in correlation though, as it is the case with painting in very pure unmixed colours. In that manner, fully detached by colours seen with the eyes, Gestel truely came to surprising results" (op.cit Loosjes-Terpstra 1983, p. 10). According to Loosjes - Terpstra, Gestel's refined feeling for colour came to its full advantage in his landscape and nature paintings, in which he was obviously more free than in his interiors (op.cit. Loosjes-Terpstra 1983, p. 10). The present lot, Herfstdag te Nijmegen, is a succesful example of this, and is from an art historical point of view of crucial importance for the artist's oeuvre.