JEAN BAPTISTE ARMAND GUILLAUMIN PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY

JEAN BAPTISTE ARMAND GUILLAUMIN

French, 1841 - 1927

BIOGRAPHY
Jean Baptiste Armand Guillaumin was the least known of the original group of Impressionist artists, exhibiting with them at the Salon des Refusés of 1863. The artist “made a significant contribution to the development of the new pictorial aesthetic, at gatherings of what was still known as the circle of ’Naturalists’ in the Café Guerbois.

“Guillaumin came from a modest background, and occupied a lowly post at the French ministry of Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Highways). His spare time was devoted to painting. In 1863, aged 22, he attended the Académie Suisse, the haunt of numerous young artists seeking to rebel against the official, traditional art of the Salons and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and where he met his lifelong friends Cezanne and Pissarro. He was made president of the paintings section of the Salon d'Automne, in 1905.

Guillaumin's work featured in all of the Impressionist exhibitions at Galerie Nadar from the first show in1874 (with the exception of 1876 and 1879). His paintings were shown at the exhibition Entre ciel et terre, Camille Pissaro et les peintres de la vallée de l'Oise at the Musée Tavet-Delacour in Pontoise, in 2003. Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Clermont-Ferrand, 1995; Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne, 1996; Musée Fournaise, Chatou, 2003. Guillaumin painted exclusively out of doors, from nature, from his earliest period. Success came late in his career, and several critics have misguidedly focused on his early Parisian works to the exclusion of other periods. His paintings capture the changing light of Montmartre (at the time a relatively rural satellite of Paris), the Bièvre valley (unrecognisable today, but celebrated in Guillaumin's lifetime by the writer J.-K. Huysmans), and the quais along the Seine in central Paris.

From 1875 to 1880, he was a frequent guest of Dr. Gachet at Auvers, seeking out the rural scenery of the Yonne and, later, the Creuse and the countryside around Crozant, where he spent most of his life. From 1887 onwards, he became a friend of Van Gogh. Significantly, one of the causes of Vincent's tragic disagreement with Gachet, leading him to quit the doctor's home for the nearby inn, where he took his own life, was what Van Gogh saw as Gachet's inappropriate hanging of a painting by Giiillaumin.

In 1891, Guillaumin won the enormous sum of 100,000 francs in a state lottery, and was able to leave his job with the Ponts et Chaussées in order to travel and paint throughout France, along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, notably at St-Palaus-sur-Mer and Agay. He also visited Holland, for a two-month spell in 1904.

Guillaumin's best-known works include: Pissarro Painting the Moulin des Bouchardonnes (purchased for the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris), Meadow at Crozant, Highway, Cro-zant, Rocks in the Creuse Valley etc., and the following signed lithographs: Child Eating a Bowl of Soup, the Chemin des Hautes Bruyères, Banks of a River, Frozen Canal, the Bas-Meudon etc. His earliest works are notable for their thickly-applied paint and bright colours (Views of Montmartre, of about 1865, Barges on the Seine at Bercy of 1871, now in the Musée d'Orsay, and Sunset at Ivry of 1870, one of his most highly colored works.) Guillaumin's output features numerous works on a par with those of his more celebrated fellow Impressionists, yet he has continued to be poorly received by the critics, largely due to what is perceived as his ill-judged preference for 'excessive polychromy'. Guillaumin's friend, the Academician Georges Lecomte, is the author of an important monograph on his work.

[Benezit, Dictionary of Artists, Paris, 2000, vol. 6, pp. 869-870]

Museum Collections
Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums, Aberdeen
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland
Birmingham Museums Trust, Birmingham
Brodie Castle, National Trust for Scotland, Forres
Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, NY
Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Glasgow Museums, Glasgow
Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Judges’ Lodging, Lancaster
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre
Musée du Luxembourg, Paris
Musée Départemental d’Art Ancien et Contemporain, Épinal
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Museo Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Museum Barberini, Potsdam
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Newfields, Indianapolis, IN
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA
Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX
San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS
Tate Britain, London
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Mark Murray Fine Paintings is a New York gallery specializing in buying and selling 19th century and early 20th century artwork.

Please contact us if you are interested in selling your Jean Baptiste Armand Guillaumin paintings or other artwork from the 19th century and early 20th century.