Lot 9: John Peter Russell (1858-1930)

John Peter Russell (1858-1930)
La Mer à La Spezia
signed and inscribed 'John Russell, Spezzia' (lower left), with title on the G. Denis gallery label on the reverse
oil on canvas
23 5/8 x 28 5/16in. (60 x 72cm.)

Paris, Galerie G. Denis, 1941(?), cat. no.59.
London, Wildenstein & Co., John Peter Russell Australian Impressionist, July 1965, cat. no.36.
Melbourne, Joseph Brown Gallery, August-September 1968, cat. no.14.

A. Galbally, The Art of John Peter Russell, Melbourne, 1977, p.106, cat. no.151.

Jeanne Jouve (the artist's daughter).
Mme Gueye (the artist's great-niece), France.
with the Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne.
Anon. sale, Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 20 April, 1972, lot 26.
Private Collection, Victoria.
Anon. sale, Christie's, Melbourne, 26 Nov. 1996, lot 137.
Private collection, England.
Anon. sale, Christie's, Melbourne, 3 May 2004, lot 55.

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium
After Marianna's death in 1908, Russell left Belle-Île for Paris, and thence to Italy, where the Russells settled in Portofino. Following his marriage to the American singer Caroline de Witt Merrill (his daughter Jeanne's singing tutor), the household settled in La Spezia c.1912-14, on the Ligurian coast of northern Italy, until cholera forced them to move to Schonreid in Switzerland. After the outbreak of the Great War, they moved on to England in 1915, and lived in Streatham through the war years.

The present picture, which probably dates to his years of residence in La Spezia, recalls the high colour and format of his Antibes pictures of the early 1890s, themselves inspired by ten Antibes canvases by Monet Russell saw when he lunched with the artist in Paris in the summer of 1888 (the ten works exhibited by Theo van Gogh at Galerie Boussod, Valadon et Cie., Dix marines d'Antibes de M. Claude Monet, June-July 1888): 'Very fine in colour and light of a certain richness of envelop' as Russell described them in a letter sent to Vincent van Gogh in Arles in 1888. Monet had found the light and colour of the Riviera a revelation: 'It is so beautiful here, so bright, so luminous. One swims in blue air, and it is frightening...' (Monet to Geoffroy quoted in J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, Kimbell Art Museum exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth, 1997, p.120). On Monet's tracks, Russell visited Nice and Antibes in the 1890s, relishing the bright light of the Mediterranean which contrasted with the softer light of his Atlantic home on Belle-Île. The southern light gave him more opportunities to indulge in pure colour painting through the 1890s, his palette edited down to carry just the 'bright metallic oxides' (Galbally) of the impressionists, and the Ligurian coast gave him the same opportunities a few years later: 'When he moved to Italy Russell responded to the brighter light and changed his high hues and very sweet colours -- citrine yellow, yellow-pinks, greens and blues.' (A. Galbally, op. cit., p.82)