Philip Leslie Hale (American 1865-1936)
Maison Rose, Giverny
Unsigned, identified on a label from ArtGiverny, Oakland, California, affixed to the stretcher.
Oil on canvas, 23 3/8 x 28 5/8 in. (59.3 x 72.8 cm), framed.
Condition: Scattered areas of craquelure, natural fluorescence to much of the green pigment in the foliage.
Provenance: Gift from the artist to Theodore Earl Butler (1861-1936); Butler Hoschedé Monet family; by descent through the family.
N.B. Philip Leslie Hale counted fellow American artist Theodore Earl Butler as one of his dearest friends. As young art students, they had studied in Paris and then made their first visit to Giverny in the summer of 1888. Butler became one of the central figures of the group of American artists that flocked to Giverny to learn Impressionism from one of its masters, Claude Monet. Hale returned to Giverny most summers between 1888 and 1893 to visit Butler. It was during one of these trips, likely in the summer of 1892, that he painted this view of a house which, with its pink walls and green shutters, closely resembles Monet's home. The building is most likely another structure on Monet's property, Maison Rose, that Butler rented for a few years between marrying Monet's stepdaughter, Suzanne Hoschedé, in 1892 and moving into a house he designed for his growing family elsewhere in Giverny in 1895. A very similar view of the same building, entitled French Farmhouse, is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and dated circa 1893 (see https://collections.mfa.org/objects/34731). That painting displays Hale's adoption of the Pointillist techniques of Neo-Impressionism, with small distinct dabs of pure, unmixed color. The work at hand likely dates to the previous summer, when Hale began to experiment with the new style. While some evidence of Hale's interest in Neo-Impressionism can be seen in the diagonal brushstrokes defining the bush at right, it is not nearly as distinctive as in the MFA painting.
Estimate $20,000-40,000
Frame dimensions are 29 3/4 x 35 1/4 x 1 inches. Frame made by Aedicule, San Francisco.
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