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Lot Essay
The Comité Sisley will include this painting in the new edition of the Sisley catalogue raisonné by François Daulte.
Sisley seldom tackled still-life subjects. Le brochet (The Pike) is one of only nine still-lifes recorded in François Daulte's catalogue raisonné of Sisley's output, with four works dating from the 1860s, three from the 1870s and just two, the present work and another fish subject, coming from 1888. Notable is the virtuosity with which Sisley renders the nuanced colours and rippling textures of the subject in Le brochet, with a heavily-laden brush carefully establishing volume.
Le brochet was originally in the collection of Jean-Baptiste Faure, an important early patron of the Impressionists. Faure's fame and fortune rested in his rags-to-riches story as a poor orphan boy from the provinces who rose to become a hero of the Parisian operatic stage during the Second Empire. Meyerbeer, the éminence grise of the French musical establishment, was a guest at his wedding in 1858, and Verdi considered Faure's baritone the only good voice at the Paris
Opéra.
Faure's friendship with Manet, recorded in the artist's magisterial
portait of the singer in the role of Thomas' Hamlet (Museum
Folkwang, Essen), led to his acquaintance with other members of the
same generation, and in 1874 he accompanied Sisley on a trip to London. Subsequently, Faure acquired several works by Sisley which hung
alongside his Monets, Degas and Pissarros. Over the course of many
years of collecting, Faure sold a number of his pictures before his death in 1914. The presence of this work in the collection of his daughter-in-law during the 1917 Georges Petit exhibition, however, suggests that Le brochet was one of the works from which he never wished to be parted.
Sisley seldom tackled still-life subjects. Le brochet (The Pike) is one of only nine still-lifes recorded in François Daulte's catalogue raisonné of Sisley's output, with four works dating from the 1860s, three from the 1870s and just two, the present work and another fish subject, coming from 1888. Notable is the virtuosity with which Sisley renders the nuanced colours and rippling textures of the subject in Le brochet, with a heavily-laden brush carefully establishing volume.
Le brochet was originally in the collection of Jean-Baptiste Faure, an important early patron of the Impressionists. Faure's fame and fortune rested in his rags-to-riches story as a poor orphan boy from the provinces who rose to become a hero of the Parisian operatic stage during the Second Empire. Meyerbeer, the éminence grise of the French musical establishment, was a guest at his wedding in 1858, and Verdi considered Faure's baritone the only good voice at the Paris
Opéra.
Faure's friendship with Manet, recorded in the artist's magisterial
portait of the singer in the role of Thomas' Hamlet (Museum
Folkwang, Essen), led to his acquaintance with other members of the
same generation, and in 1874 he accompanied Sisley on a trip to London. Subsequently, Faure acquired several works by Sisley which hung
alongside his Monets, Degas and Pissarros. Over the course of many
years of collecting, Faure sold a number of his pictures before his death in 1914. The presence of this work in the collection of his daughter-in-law during the 1917 Georges Petit exhibition, however, suggests that Le brochet was one of the works from which he never wished to be parted.