Old Masters and 19th Century Art

Provenance:

The Artist.

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1897-1951 (accession no. 97.7).

M. Knoedler & Company, New York, 1951.

Tobias Fischer Gallery, 1951.

Estate of Davis Bennett, until 1991.

R. H. Love Galleries, Inc., Chicago, Illinois.

Private Collection, Chicago, Illinois.

Exhibited:

Paris Salon, 1888, no. 2422 (awarded Third Class Gold Medal).

Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1889 (awarded First Class Gold Medal)

Paris, American Women's Club, 1928

New York, American Fine Arts Society Galleries, 1939, no. 10.

Washington, DC, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1897-1951

Literature:

F. G. Dumas, ed., The Illustrated Catalogue of the Paris Salon, London, 1888, pp. 41; 223, illus.

Eugene Montrosier, Salon de 1888, Cent Planches en Photogravure, Paris, 1888, p. 106.

Biographical Sketches of American Artists, Lansing, Michigan, 1924, p. 94.

Louise Gebhard Cann, "The Art of Eugene Vail," The Bulletin of the American Women's Club of Paris, Inc., Paris, 1928, introduction and p. 5, illus.

"Pan's Art Notes," The New York Herald (European Edition), May 19, 1935.

Louise Gebhard Cann, Eugene Lawrence Vail, Paris, 1937, n.p., illus.

New York Times, January 26, 1939.

"Memorial Exhibition of Eugene Vail Paintings," The Sunday Star, Washington, DC, January 28, 1940, p. F5, illus.

Lot Essay:

Ready About (Paré à Virer), 1888, is a monumental work by the artist Eugène Vail, who was born in France to a French mother and an American father. At the insistence of his father, he studied at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1877. After college he joined the National Guard, traveling with a Western expedition led by Captain George Wheeler. At the end of his service, and now free to pursue his true interest, Vail became a student of William Merritt Chase and J. Carroll Beckwith at the Art Students League in New York before returning to France. In Paris, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1882, where he was instructed by Alexandre Cabanel, Raphaël Collin, and Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, the latter the leader of the Naturalist School.

Like many artists of the late 19th century, Vail frequented Pont-Aven and Concarneau in Brittany, but eventually was attracted to Étaples, in Boulogne, along the northern coast of France. With its traditional fishing industry and rustic seafarers, Étaples appealed to both French and foreign painters alike. Vail was drawn to the life of the hardworking sailors, who he accurately depicted engaging in fishing activities, often with a sober palette of cool colors and in enormous formats.

It was here in Étaples that the artist executed Ready About (Paré à Virer), in 1888. Measuring at an impressive 94 x 125 ½ inches, the painting won a third-class gold medal in the Paris Salon of 1888, then in the following year, it won a first-class gold medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle. The composition is close-cropped, as if the viewer is sitting in the bow of the diagonally rocking boat. Two sailors strain to pull a rope in the immediate foreground and are depicted at almost life-sized. In the stern and at an elevated position, the captain powerfully grips the helm as he looks out over the rolling waves that threaten to capsize his vessel. With its uniform use of rectangular strokes, Vail's vigorous brushwork emphasizes the dynamic movement of the image. The overall green-gray tonalities likewise evoke the cold and wet conditions of the rough waters, with only the vivid red flesh of the day’s catch in the boat’s lower right corner to punctuate the chilly atmosphere. Theodore Child wrote about this painting: "very beautiful in color, and amongst the very strongest and best pictures of this kind in the Exhibition." (T. Child, "American Artists at the Paris Exposition." Harper's New Monthly Magazine, September 1889, p. 518)

In 1897, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, acquired the present work directly from Vail for a sum of $1,000. Vail reportedly instructed the gallery that it should be examined "at some distance, as it was painted with the object of carrying best at about twelve feet." The same year, the Mancini Gallery in Paris welcomed:

Eugène Vail, whose previous successes had long since brought him to the attention of the discerning, who is currently in full development, and it is to a new form of art that he now devotes his fully mature talent. He is an evocative artist. His vigorous and calm colorings give a deep emotion, for this painter translates nature without sentimentality and knows how to convey to the mind of the spectator the feeling and impression that emerge from beings and things. A happy mixture of symbolism and reality, a disturbing evocation of art, such is the work of Eugène Vail, who has managed to imprint on his canvases a conscientious, bold, original individuality, which deserves to capture the attention of the most enlightened art lovers. (L'Intransigeant, December 25, 1897, p. 3)