(Mont Saint Pere, Aisne 1844-1925 Paris)
“Les Lavandeuses a Chelles”, signed L. Lhermitte, oil on canvas, 72.4 x 92.1 cm, framed, (Rei)

Provenance:
Boussod, Valadon & Cie, Paris, no. 21503; Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, February 1909;
Wallis French Gallery, London, March 1909;
Richard Green, London;
Private collection, London;
Christie’s New York, 25 October 2006, lot 153;
Private collection, Los Angeles.

Catalogued and illustrated in:
M. Le Pelley Fonteny, Leon Augustin Lhermitte: 1844–1825: Catalogue raisonné, Paris 1991, p. 254, no. 542.

Léon Lhermitte, born in 1844 was the last in an illustrious group of artists who still created paintings in the French rural tradition when he died in 1925. His artistic talent was recognized at early age, why he left his home at Mont-Saint-Père in Aisne for the Petite Ecole in Paris in 1863, where he studied with Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Lecoq was well known for his methods of training the visual memory of his students, which had a profound influence on the young Léon. It was in Lecoq’s studio that Lhermitte formed a life-long friendship with Jean-Baptiste Cazin and also became acquainted with Alphonse Legros, Henri Fantin-Latour and Auguste Rodin.
Lhermitte sent his initial entry to the Salon in 1864 when he was just nineteen, and won his first medal in 1874 with La moisson (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Carcasonne). The artist was awarded many prizes and honors throughout his life, including the Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, the Diplome d’honneur, Dresden in 1890, and he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1884. He was a founding member of the Société nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Lhermitte’s subject matter rarely deviated from the peasants and rural life. The most profound influence on his art was certainly Jean-François Millet who was an inspiring example in artistic techniques and traditions. Like Millet, Lhermitte created beautiful, light-filled works in the manner of the Barbizon school. This painting here is a fine example of Lhermittes achievements in reinforcing the dignity of the Lavandeuses and the peasant life in general, combined with the glory of the French rural landscape in the face of encroaching technology. The arduous routine of the laundresses is depicted in such incredible light by Lhermitte that the women almost appear iconic along the riverside.
Lhermitte was an artist much-admired by his contemporaries. Vincent van Gogh wrote of him: „He’s a master of the figure. He’s able to do what he likes with it — conceiving the whole neither from the colour nor from the local tone, but rather proceeding from the light — as Rembrandt did — there’s something astonishingly masterly in everything he does — in modelling, above all things, he utterly satisfies the demands of honesty.“ Continuing: “It is certain that for years I have not seen anything as beautiful as scenes by Lhermitte. […] I am too preoccupied by Lhermitte this evening to be able to talk of other things. When I think about Millet or about Lhermitte — then — I find modern art as great — as Michelangelo and Rembrandt - the old infinite, the new infinite too - the old genius, the new genius.”
(Letter 531 to Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, September 2nd 1885.).