GENERAL DESCRIPTION
NOTES
Created in 1882
Checked Piction
No General Description. Do not use text below or original Brettell text acc. to Nicole Myers.
Adapted from (started but did not complete adaptation after talking to EAS)
This delightful, subtle still life was painted when the artist was only eighteen years old, before he became certain of his profession as a painter. Its subject, a bunch of violets, has precise connotations to the French; men often bought small bouquets of fragrant violets from street vendors as gifts to women. Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt had already depicted them when Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec started this small painting. Given its imagery, the painting could be interpreted as a pictorial offering to a loved one or friend, except for the lack of an inscription and the fact that its first owner, Dr. Viau, was a prominent collector. The background of the painting is a freely brushed field of dark brown "ébauche" (underpainting) over white priming, and the forms of the glass and the flowers appear to have been defined in this paint while it was still wet. The delightfully gestural handling seems to be an attempt by the young painter at a tour de force, but he failed to achieve the elegance and ease of his hero, Manet, who was creating floral still lifes at the same moment, at the end of his career.
The dimensions of the panel suggest that it was painted on a cigar-box top. Many vanguard artists liked this material because such panels were readily available and were made of absolutely flat, excellent cured wood. In addition, the relatively small size of these panels allowed them to be packed easily for an outdoor oil sketching adventure.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 85.
France---needs more research, while studying under Leon Bonnat in Paris?
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: France (nation): TGN: 1000070
Process/materials
Oil on panel
Historical periods
Individuals
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AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
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WEB RESOURCES
- Driehaus Museum, Chicago~Read more about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec from this article, Tragedy & Brilliance: The Life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
- Museum of Modern Art, New York~Learn more about the life and work of Toulouse-Lautrec from MOMA.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec from the Met.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
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TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
Apply to objects where number equals 1985.R.77
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General Description
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Driehaus Museum, Chicago~Read more about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec from this article, Tragedy & Brilliance: The Life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
- Museum of Modern Art, New York~Learn more about the life and work of Toulouse-Lautrec from MOMA.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec from the Met.
Notes
Created in 1882
Checked Piction
No General Description. Do not use text below or original Brettell text acc. to Nicole Myers.
Adapted from (started but did not complete adaptation after talking to EAS)
This delightful, subtle still life was painted when the artist was only eighteen years old, before he became certain of his profession as a painter. Its subject, a bunch of violets, has precise connotations to the French; men often bought small bouquets of fragrant violets from street vendors as gifts to women. Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt had already depicted them when Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec started this small painting. Given its imagery, the painting could be interpreted as a pictorial offering to a loved one or friend, except for the lack of an inscription and the fact that its first owner, Dr. Viau, was a prominent collector. The background of the painting is a freely brushed field of dark brown "ébauche" (underpainting) over white priming, and the forms of the glass and the flowers appear to have been defined in this paint while it was still wet. The delightfully gestural handling seems to be an attempt by the young painter at a tour de force, but he failed to achieve the elegance and ease of his hero, Manet, who was creating floral still lifes at the same moment, at the end of his career.
The dimensions of the panel suggest that it was painted on a cigar-box top. Many vanguard artists liked this material because such panels were readily available and were made of absolutely flat, excellent cured wood. In addition, the relatively small size of these panels allowed them to be packed easily for an outdoor oil sketching adventure.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 85.
France---needs more research, while studying under Leon Bonnat in Paris?
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: France (nation): TGN: 1000070
Process/materials
Oil on panel
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
Apply To
Objects
number
Equals
1985.R.77
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object_notes_1_b-0194.xml.nores