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ALBERT LEBOURG

Montford sur Risle 1849 - 1928 Rouen

 

Les Bords de la Seine à Caumont en Eté, 1911

The Banks of the Seine River at Caumont in the Summer

 

Oil on canvas

460 x 760 mm.; 18 1/8 x 29 7/8 inches

Signed and dated, lower left: Lebourg Caumont 1911

Notes:

1. Lebourg’s roots were in Normandy and particularly Rouen where his painting has been appreciated since the early 1870s. His recognition in the Parisian world came with his participation in 1879 in what now is called the 4th Impressionist Exhibition. This exhibition, which took place at 28 avenue de l’Opéra in Paris, included Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas, Monet, Pissarro and Lebourg who showed twenty paintings and ten drawings. Subsequently, Lebourg took part in the 5th Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1880. The artists in this latter exhibition included Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas, Guillaumin, Lebourg, Morisot and Pissarro. In this exhibition, Lebourg presented ten paintings and sixteen drawings and watercolors.

2. Recognition of the importance of the Impressionists by the French museums, and particularly by those in the provinces, gained considerable momentum through the gift (which included 13 paintings by Lebourg) of the collector François Depeaux to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen in 1909. At the time of this gift, Depeaux stated (quoted in: François Lespinasse, Albert Lebourg, Rouen, 1983: p. 206):

...this collection seems to me to give a good idea of what has been called Impressionism, but what could be more correctly called the School of Open-Air Painting (école en plein air). [Our purpose is] to open widely the doors of this museum to an art which, although very criticized at its beginnings and even up to just a few years ago, finally through the truth and ardent conviction of its apostles, [that is to say] Cl. Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Pissarro, Guillaumin, Lebourg and all the following young [artists], now see their works classified among mankind’s most beautiful [artistic] achievements...

3. To be included in the forthcoming Lebourg: Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by Rodolphe Walter, Wildenstein Institute.