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Overview
Claude Monet was so taken with Barbier's works that he sponsored an exhibition of his works with a preface by Monet's biographer and friend, Gustave Geffroy, who urged him to "build of mist and light, a world of poetry"
André Barbier (1883-1970) was born in Arras, France into a family of lawyers. At the age of twenty, Barbier settled in Paris at the Quai aux Fleurs, and in the same year, 1903, he began exhibiting landscapes and still lifes at the Paris Salons. Inspired by his Impressionist forbears, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet and Camille Corot, Barbier delighted in depicting verdant forests and luminous seascapes at different times of the day and in a variety of atmospheric conditions. Like many of his contemporaries in early nineteenth-century Paris, Barbier travelled extensively in pursuit of subjects for his landscapes. Barbier chose to capture scenes of the Normandy coast and the French Riviera and also travelled further afield to Italy.
Although a follower of the Impressionists, Barbier’s style is wholeheartedly distinct. Barbier built up compositions using delicate layers of paint in a post-impressionist manner, often using a flickering outline to the forms within the landscape and imbuing his compositions with a delicate haze of light. Due to his wealth, much of Barbier's work has remained with his family, but today his paintings are collected extensively in America and Europe and have recently been bought by members of the Monaco and Belgian Royal families.
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Works
André Barbier French, 1883-1970
Bateau sur la SeineOil on Canvas46 x 61 cms / 18 x 24 inchesSigned 'Barbier' (lower right)Further images
Description
Bateau sur la Seine shows a small vessel moving across the wide surface of the river, its dark silhouette positioned at the centre of a broad expanse of water. The composition is dominated by the river and sky, both described through pale greys, blues and soft whites that merge across the horizon. A faint suggestion of the riverbank appears to the right, while the wake of the boat spreads outward in long streaks across the water’s surface. Bateau sur la Seine reflects the Impressionist interest in capturing changing atmospheric conditions along the Seine, a subject explored extensively by artists working in the Paris region during the late nineteenth century. André Barbier, who was associated with Claude Monet and the circle of painters working along the river, often depicted similar scenes of boats and waterways. Here the surface is built with broken brushwork and thin layers of paint that suggest shifting light and movement across the water, focusing attention on the expansive atmosphere of the river landscape.
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