Stanislas Victor Edouard Lépine,

French 1835 1892-

'Caen, La rue de Calix Sous la Neige';

oil on canvas, signed 'S Lépine' lower left, 42 x 53.5cm

Provenance:

Durand-Ruel, Paris;

Bernheim-Jeune, Paris;

Hotel Droutot, Paris 7th June 1948 lot 92;

Adolphe Tavernier, Paris;

Tédesco, Paris;

Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd., London no.2155;

Exhibition:
'Salon des Artistes Français,' Paris 1876, no.1299;
Galerie Rosenberg, 'Lépine', Paris, 1907 no.17;

Literature:

R. and M. Schmidt, 'Stanislas Lépine 1835-1892 Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre peint', Paris, 1993, no. 634p.255 (illus b/w)

Note:

The present work is by the nineteenth-century French painter Stanislas Lépine. Lépine was closely associated with his Impressionist contemporaries, participating in the first Impressionist exhibition at Nadars Galley in 1874 alongside artists such as Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Paul Cezanne, amongst others. It was Jean-Baptiste-Camile-Corot, under whom Lépine studied, who is often understood to have had the greatest influence on the latters style and choice of subject matter.

The present painting, of a street in the artists hometown of Caen, is characteristic of the views which make up the artists output, alongside depictions of the Norman town of Rouen, and the banks of the Seine. The composition and technique of the piece are also typical of Lépine, with his use of muted pigments thickly applied with bold brushstrokes creating a sense of the quietude which accompanies heavy snowfall, further reinforced by the relative absence of human figures within the scene.

Works by Lépine are currently held in collections of the National Gallery in London, the Ashmolean in Oxford, the Musee dOrsay in Paris, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.