Stanislas Lépine

Collection Stumpf, Paris;

His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 7 May 1906, lot 60;

With Brame et Lorenceau, Paris;

Collection Jacques Watelin, Paris;

Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 20 June 1939, lot 37;

Arthur Tooth & Sons, London;

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, 22 June 2004, lot 211.

R. and M. Schmit, Stanislas Lépine, Catalogue Raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Paris 1993, p. 208, no. 518 repr.

Paris, Galerie La Bodinière, Exposition des œuvres de feu le Peintre S. Lépine, January 1895, no. 47.

Stanislas Lépine’s paintings are primarily views of the landscapes around Paris, like this canvas which shows the Seine downstream from Paris. As a pupil of Corot from 1860, he learnt to observe and depict nature. Human figures are almost absent: the accent is on the monumentality and harmony of the landscape, following in the footsteps of Camille Corot’s pastoral representations.

However, he was also a resolutely modern painter. He adopted a lighter palette than the Barbizon School to which his master belonged: the sky and water are bathed in a light that is both gentle and radiant, perhaps borrowed from the palette of Jongkind, whose work he had often copied. Finally, he was inspired by the experimentation that was preoccupying the Impressionists in the same period and sought to paint an atmospheric landscape in which colour conveys a sense of peace associated with contemplation.