ANDRE BARBIER | Falaise de Pourville
Oil on Paper on Canvas
46 x 61 cms / 18 x 24 inches
Signed 'André Barbier' (lower left)
A sweep of pale sand curves across the foreground, marked by elongated shadows and low, broken brushstrokes that describe the uneven surface of the beach. To the left, a vertical chalk face rises abruptly, its edge cropped by the picture plane, while further along the coast the cliffs recede in softened planes of blue and green. The sea occupies the right half of the composition, rendered in light turquoise and milky tones beneath a high, luminous sky. The viewpoint is set at ground level, looking obliquely along the shoreline so that cliff, beach and water unfold in successive bands. Oil is applied in thin layers with visible, directional strokes, particularly across the cliff face where subtle shifts in colour articulate the rock. Painted during the artist’s campaigns in Normandy, Falaise de Pourville forms part of a sustained engagement with the coastal sites around Dieppe and Pourville in the late nineteenth century.
Inspired by his Impressionist forbears, André Barbier delighted in depicting verdant forests and luminous seascapes at different times of the day and in a variety of atmospheric conditions. Like many of his contemporaries in early nineteenth-century Paris, Barbier travelled extensively in pursuit of subjects for his landscapes.
In 1916 Barbier met Claude Monet and the two artists immediately struck up a friendship. Monet was so taken with Barbiers works that he sponsored an exhibition of his works with a preface by Monets biographer and friend, Gustave Geffroy, who urged him to build of mist and light, a world of poetry. Although a follower of the Impressionists, Barbiers style is wholeheartedly distinct. Barbier built up compositions using delicate layers of paint in a post-impressionist manner, often using a flickering outline to the forms within the landscape and imbuing his compositions with a delicate haze of light.
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