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Lot Essay
Guy Rose is revered as one of the most important American Impressionists of the turn of the 19th century and is arguably the most significant California painter who worked in the plein air tradition. Rose had an exceptional career working in France as an Impressionist in the company of Monet, and produced a wonderful body of work there including La Grosse Pierre, painted circa 1910. In palette and composition, La Grosse Pierre exemplifies the finest canvases that Guy Rose painted while in Giverny.
Rose first visited the French country side in about 1890 while he was in Paris, attending the Academie Julian and exhibiting at the Salon. In Giverny, Rose was drawn to the small town's country setting and, like many other artists of the day, was influenced by the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet who was living there at the time. Rose's exposure to Monet's impressions of the French countryside and his conversations with Monet about his art had a lifelong and profound affect on Rose's work. A distinct but gradual shift from the academic style of Rose's early paintings toward Impressionism can be seen in the decade after this visit to Giverny. (W. South, Guy Rose: American Impressionist, Oakland, California, 1995, pp. 24-25)
In 1899 Rose and his wife Ethel returned to Giverny from the United States, and in 1904 they purchased a cottage and converted it into a studio and home. Rose's paintings in the first years of the 20th century exhibit a full commitment to painting in the Impressionist style. "He painted landscapes and figures, and combinations thereof, with a mature sensitivity to the interpretation of transient color and fugitive light." (Guy Rose: American Impressionist, p. 40) Rose's poetic interpretations of the French countryside show Monet's influence on the artist's work in terms of a bright palette and lively brushwork.
"Though he worked in early-twentieth-century France in the shadow of Monet, Rose nonetheless remained close to his cultural roots in America. His adult attitude toward nature was in many respects unchanged from his student years-it was still humble and subservient. One of the paintings that best embodies Rose's continued adherence to notions of the grand, awe-inspiring power of landscape is The Large Rock, a view of the limestone cliffs overlooking Giverny that recalls in its optical breadth Thomas Hill's views of Yosemite." (W.H. Gerdts and W. South, California Impressionism, New York, 1998, p. 176) While the palette in La Grosse Pierre is soft and muted, Rose presents the viewer with a dramatic vista of the lush French countryside. The bucolic fields, river and bridge below are counterpoints to the rough, natural rock outcropping in the immediate foreground. Man and nature are joined in a carefully constructed composition.
Will South writes of the work, "One of the paintings that best embodies Rose's quiet and reclusive personality is La grosse pierre (The Large Rock), a view of the limestone cliffs overlooking Giverny. The railroad bridge over the river that served travelers from Vernon to Gisors is faintly visible in the distance. The river, the village, and the landscape beyond are submerged in an allover, uniform blue-gray tone, while the foreground limestone cliffs are in sharper focus. Details in the distance are suppressed, forms are obscured and edges lost, and the dense, wet atmosphere is maximized. This is not the intense, brilliant outdoor light that one often equates with Impressionism; the stimulation of a multicolored canvas is exchanged for the reductive calm of a single tone. This is the depiction of an atmosphere that conceals. Color in this painting has a symbolic function as much as a descriptive one, as it evokes an insular distant melancholy.
Rose's affinity for literary and poetic allusion in his paintings was present early in his career, most clearly in The End of the Day and The Moth. With La grosse pierre, these early inclinations had matured into a thoughtful, self-searching aestheticism. In this image, solitude and silence coalesce within a composition that is built primarily on empty space. La grosse pierre invites speculation regarding Rose's admiration for James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), innovator and major practitioner of that painting style referred to as Tonalism." (Guy Rose: American Impressionist, p. 50)
The painting retains its original Stanford White frame that has a plaque identifying it as the silver medal winner at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
This work will be included in the catalogue raisonné on the artist's work being compiled by Roy Rose and the Irvine Museum.
Rose first visited the French country side in about 1890 while he was in Paris, attending the Academie Julian and exhibiting at the Salon. In Giverny, Rose was drawn to the small town's country setting and, like many other artists of the day, was influenced by the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet who was living there at the time. Rose's exposure to Monet's impressions of the French countryside and his conversations with Monet about his art had a lifelong and profound affect on Rose's work. A distinct but gradual shift from the academic style of Rose's early paintings toward Impressionism can be seen in the decade after this visit to Giverny. (W. South, Guy Rose: American Impressionist, Oakland, California, 1995, pp. 24-25)
In 1899 Rose and his wife Ethel returned to Giverny from the United States, and in 1904 they purchased a cottage and converted it into a studio and home. Rose's paintings in the first years of the 20th century exhibit a full commitment to painting in the Impressionist style. "He painted landscapes and figures, and combinations thereof, with a mature sensitivity to the interpretation of transient color and fugitive light." (Guy Rose: American Impressionist, p. 40) Rose's poetic interpretations of the French countryside show Monet's influence on the artist's work in terms of a bright palette and lively brushwork.
"Though he worked in early-twentieth-century France in the shadow of Monet, Rose nonetheless remained close to his cultural roots in America. His adult attitude toward nature was in many respects unchanged from his student years-it was still humble and subservient. One of the paintings that best embodies Rose's continued adherence to notions of the grand, awe-inspiring power of landscape is The Large Rock, a view of the limestone cliffs overlooking Giverny that recalls in its optical breadth Thomas Hill's views of Yosemite." (W.H. Gerdts and W. South, California Impressionism, New York, 1998, p. 176) While the palette in La Grosse Pierre is soft and muted, Rose presents the viewer with a dramatic vista of the lush French countryside. The bucolic fields, river and bridge below are counterpoints to the rough, natural rock outcropping in the immediate foreground. Man and nature are joined in a carefully constructed composition.
Will South writes of the work, "One of the paintings that best embodies Rose's quiet and reclusive personality is La grosse pierre (The Large Rock), a view of the limestone cliffs overlooking Giverny. The railroad bridge over the river that served travelers from Vernon to Gisors is faintly visible in the distance. The river, the village, and the landscape beyond are submerged in an allover, uniform blue-gray tone, while the foreground limestone cliffs are in sharper focus. Details in the distance are suppressed, forms are obscured and edges lost, and the dense, wet atmosphere is maximized. This is not the intense, brilliant outdoor light that one often equates with Impressionism; the stimulation of a multicolored canvas is exchanged for the reductive calm of a single tone. This is the depiction of an atmosphere that conceals. Color in this painting has a symbolic function as much as a descriptive one, as it evokes an insular distant melancholy.
Rose's affinity for literary and poetic allusion in his paintings was present early in his career, most clearly in The End of the Day and The Moth. With La grosse pierre, these early inclinations had matured into a thoughtful, self-searching aestheticism. In this image, solitude and silence coalesce within a composition that is built primarily on empty space. La grosse pierre invites speculation regarding Rose's admiration for James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), innovator and major practitioner of that painting style referred to as Tonalism." (Guy Rose: American Impressionist, p. 50)
The painting retains its original Stanford White frame that has a plaque identifying it as the silver medal winner at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
This work will be included in the catalogue raisonné on the artist's work being compiled by Roy Rose and the Irvine Museum.