Description
Like many of Léon-Augustin Lhermitte’s pastels, this drawing shows the Marne River in northeastern France. Such artworks were created both because of the artist’s attraction to the subject and due to their marketability. Drawing from memory, Lhermitte worked in his studio, producing a complex range of marks with pastel crayon on densely textured paper and even manipulating the powdery material with brushes and sponges. Although his comparatively traditional style did not align with artistic movements of his time, it was hugely popular around 1900—especially in the United States, where the hardworking laborers that populated his landscapes appealed to industrialist collectors.
Provenance
(Boussod, Valadon & Co., Paris) (after 1904-by 1919); (Wallis, London) (?-by 1976); (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, May 14, 1976. no. 287, sold to Shepherd Gallery, New York) (1976); (Shepherd Gallery, New York, sold to Noah L. Butkin, Shaker Heights, OH) (1976); Noah L. Butkin [1918–1980], Shaker Heights, OH, bequeathed to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1976-1980); Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1980-)
Accession Number
1980.269
Medium
pastel on gray wove paper
Dimensions
Framed: 94.3 x 124.2 x 8 cm (37 1/8 x 48 7/8 x 3 1/8 in.); Overall: 69 x 99 cm (27 3/16 x 39 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Credit Line
Bequest of Noah L. Butkin
Tags
Drawing Early Modern (1901–1950) Pastel Paper French Color: Gold
Background & Context
Background Story
Quai au Sable, Chartèves is a pastel landscape from Lhermitte's mature period, depicting a riverside scene at Chartèves in the Marne valley. The pastel medium—Lhermitte's preferred medium for his later landscapes—allows him to capture the atmospheric effects of the river landscape with a directness and luminosity that oil painting cannot match. The gray wove paper provides a neutral ground that allows the pastel colors to vibrate with maximum intensity, while the riverside subject gives Lhermitte the opportunity to combine his skill at atmospheric landscape with his lifelong interest in working-class and rural subjects.
Cultural Impact
Lhermitte's pastel landscapes of the 1900s represent the mature phase of a career that had been dedicated to the depiction of rural French life. The pastel medium, with its direct application and its luminous color, was the perfect vehicle for Lhermitte's late style: atmospheric, loose, and focused on the effects of light rather than on the detailed description that had characterized his earlier charcoal work.
Why It Matters
Quai au Sable, Chartèves is late Lhermitte in pastel: atmospheric, luminous, and focused on the effects of light on the river landscape. The pastel medium gives the scene a directness and freshness that his earlier charcoal work sacrificed to detail—a master simplifying in his maturity.
