LÉON-AUGUSTIN LHERMITTE | STUDY OF A BRETON FISHERMAN STANDING

The artist's studio

Private collection (from 1982-1990)

Galérie Jean de La Fontaine, Paris (by March 1990)

David M. Daniels (acquired from the above, April 1990)

Sale: Property from the Estates of David M. Daniels and Stevan Beck Baloga, Sotheby's, New York, October 29, 2002, lot 81, illustrated

Galerie Michael, Beverly Hills

Acquired from the above

Monique Le Pelley Fonteny, Léon Augustin Lhermitte: catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1991, p. 361, no. 228, illustrated

Paris, Galerie Jean de la Fontaine, Dessins de Léon Lhermitte, March 17-April 28, 1990, no. 22

The present study is one of a series of twelve Léon-Augustin Lhermitte completed of Breton fishermen unloading a boat. While the intricate studies point to the artist’s careful preparation, it remains unknown what larger project they may have informed. Lhermitte’s training, skill, and intimate understanding of his subject are the qualities Vincent van Gogh deeply admired and hoped to emulate. Van Gogh celebrated Lhermitte (among many others of his contemporaries such as Jules Dupré, Jean-François Millet, and Jean-François Raffaëlli) and his name appears in dozens of letters exchanged with his brother Theo. After admiring Lhermitte’s woodcuts Vincent wrote: “then I know very well that a great distance still separates me from making something like that myself. Yet as regards my views and manner of searching — that is, always directly from nature or in the poor, smoke-blackened cottage — seeing his work encourages me, for I see (in details in heads and hands, for instance) how artists like Lhermitte must have studied the peasant figure not only from a fairly great distance but from very close to, not now, while they create and compose with ease and certainty, but before they did that” (Vincent van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh, circa March 9-23, 1885, Neunen, letter no. 485).