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Carolus-Duran
French, 1837–1917
The Artist's Gardener
1893
Carolus-Duran acquired a considerable reputation painting portraits of wealthy sitters dressed in sumptuous clothing. This work, in contrast, depicts the artist’s gardener, a ruddy man with unruly hair wearing a wrinkled overcoat. Arms crossed and staring directly out of the picture, he seems impatient to return to work. The earth-toned colors are applied in loose strokes, suggesting the painting was completed quickly. An inscription in the top right corner indicates that the portrait was painted on the French Riviera, where Carolus-Duran owned a villa.
Image Caption
Carolus-Duran, The Artist's Gardener, 1893, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.40
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
32 1/8 x 21 9/16 in. (81.6 x 54.8 cm)
Frame: 41 7/16 x 31 3/4 x 3 in. (105.3 x 80.6 x 7.6 cm)
Object Number
1955.40
Acquisition
Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status
Off View
Select Bibliography
L., A. de. "Expositions diverses." La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosité. Supplement, Gazette des Beaux-Arts (27 January 1894): 28. Sertat, Raul. "Revue artistique: Petit salons." La Revue Encyclopédique 4, no. 79 (15 March 1894). Alexandre, Arsène. Carolus-Duran. Paris: Librairie G. Baranger fils, 1903. Alexandre, Arsène. "Artistes ContemporainsCarolus-Duran." La Revue de l'Art Ancien et Moderne XIV (1903): 289–304. Frankfurter, Alfred. "Dark Horse in Williamstown." Art News 54, no. 4 (Summer 1955): 28–31. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Four: First Two Rooms. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Five, Supplement: South Gallery. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1959. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1963. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Alla, Mea. William Robinson, 18381935: Father of the English Flower Garden. London: Faber and Faber, 1982. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Weinberg, H. Barbara. The Lure of Paris: Nineteenth-Century American Painters and Their French Teachers. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Simpson, Marc, et al. Uncanny Spectacle: The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1997. Augé, Jean-Louis, et al. Carolus-Duran, 18371917. Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003. Slifkin, Robert. "For the Love of Art." Journal of the Clark Art Institute 5 (2004): 4653. Ganz, James A. and Richard R. Brettell. Great French Paintings from the Clark: Barbizon through Impressionism. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications; Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2011. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.
Provenance
William Robinson, Esq., Gravetye Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex (1894–d. 1935, his sale, Christie’s, London, 19 July 1935, no. 70, as Un Terrassier: A gardener employed by the artist, sold to Tooth); [Arthur Tooth, London, from 1935]; Harcourt Johnstone, London (possibly by Dec. 1935–41, sale, Sotheby’s, London, 23 Apr. 1941, no. 112, as Un Terrassier, sold to Spiller);¹ [Knoedler, New York, sold to Clark, 18 Dec. 1941, as Portrait of the Artist’s Gardener]; Robert Sterling Clark (1941–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.
1. The invoice from Knoedler to Clark states that this painting was exhibited at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Bournemouth, from Dec. 1935 to July 1939. An undated label on the reverse of the frame indicates that the painting was being sent from the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery to Harcourt Johnstone, care of Sotheby’s, presumably in order to be sold, suggesting that Johnstone may have lent it to the Art Gallery for the full period. The painting also appeared in a sale at Sotheby’s, London, 12 June 1940, no. 154, where it was reportedly sold to a buyer named Fearon, although it seems subsequently to have been returned to Johnstone.