John Peter Russell

Galerie G. Denis, Paris
Private collection, France; thence by descent

Galerie G. Denis, Paris, 1941 (?)
John Peter Russell, un impressioniste australien: dans les collections francaises, autour du depot au Musée de Morlaix du legs Jouve, Musée du Louvre-fonds Orsay, Musée des Jacobins, Morlaix, 27 June - 2 November 1997 ; Musée de la Cohue, Vannes, 22 May - 13 September 1998

Patrick Jourdan (ed.), John Peter Russell, un impressioniste australien: dans les collections francaises, autour du depot au Musée de Morlaix du legs Jouve, Musée du Louvre-fonds Orsay, Morlaix : Musée des Jacobins, 1997, p. 46 (illus., pl. 26)
Ann Galbally, A remarkable friendship: Vincent Van Gogh and John Peter Russell, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2008, p. 166

The painting is not lined and has the original stretcher. There are two 2mm circular areas of minor paint loss (upper centre) there are a further two 5mm areas of paint loss (centre left) and one area of paint loss 20mm in diameter (lower left). There are scattered areas of flyspotting; the work would benefit from a light clean. UV inspection confirms there has been no retouching or restoration.
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Throughout the late 19th and into the early 20th century, the village of Bougival, on the left bank of the Seine some 10 kilometres east of Paris, was a favourite locale for French plein-air painters: Armand Guillaumin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley in the 1860s and 1870s, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Berthe Morisot in the 1880s, and the Fauves André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck in the early 1900s.

It also attracted John Peter Russell, a friend of Monet and the only Australian to have direct, first-hand contact with any of the original French Impressionists; he took a lease on a riverside house there in 1887. The present work is one of a series of views by the artist which Ann Galbally dates to the autumn, winter and spring of 1887-1888, and which closely recall Vincent Van Gogh's slightly previous paintings of the Seine around Asnières; Galbally records that 'the two friends had examined together Van Gogh's painting of the river and its bridges in the Rue Lepic [Paris] studio earlier in the summer.'¹  Russell had first met the great Post-Impressionist painter in March 1886; as their professional and personal friendship deepened over the next few years he was to follow (and extend) Van Gogh's various stylistic experiments with marked enthusiasm.

With particular regard to the Seine pictures, Galbally notes that 'a visual comparison between certain of Van Gogh's ... studies such as his Pont de la Grande Jatte and Seine-oever and Russell's Pont du Pecq and Vue de la Seine à Bougival indicates a similarity of approach. Both rely upon strongly directed brush strokes to give their canvases an impression of plastic forms and movement ... In both, forms are reduced to their minimum ... Both place particular emphasis on the broad and rapid stroking of the water, an area in which, particularly for Russell, the brushwork is at its freest.'²

Remorqueur sur la Seine is closely related to Russell's View of the Seine at Bougival, Spring (circa 1887-1888, private collection, sold at Sotheby's 2006), Vue de la Seine, Bougival and Pont du Pecq (both circa 1887-1888, National Gallery of Australia); indeed, all four canvases are of very similar dimensions. The present work is nevertheless distinctive in that its low viewpoint and more open brushwork more obviously subordinate the subject to the effects of atmosphere. A loose mosaic of cream, red-brown and blue-green taches, Remorqueur sur la Seine was painted wet on wet 'in a single plein-air flourish.'³  The vermilion horizontals of the vessels' painted hulls dissolve in the water in a flotilla of red reflections, while the tug's puffs of steam float above the river and the far shoreline in an echo of its foaming wake.

A rare and important example of Russell's work in the Impressionist heartland, the present work captures the riverine vista with the artist's characteristic mix of delicacy and verve.

We are most grateful to Ann Galbally for her assistance in cataloguing this work.

1.  Ann Galbally, A remarkable friendship: Vincent Van Gogh and John Peter Russell, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2008, p. 166
2.  Ann Galbally, The art of John Peter Russell, Melbourne: Sun Books, 1977, p. 36
3.  Simon Ives, 'John Peter Russell's "Vue d'Antibes"', Artonview, no. 6, Winter 1996, p. 15