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Lot Essay
‘I often use heightened colours to create a sense of the experience or mood or feeling of being there ... We have all seen incredible sunsets. We’ve all experienced the sensation of light dropping and producing strange natural effects, and I think in a way I am using these natural phenomena and amplifying them through the materiality of paint’ (Peter Doig
A sublime icy vista bathed in dazzling winter sunlight, Peter Doig’s Tour de Charvet (1995) offers an absorbing expanse of snow cast in suffused, glowing colour. Rendered in a subtle palette of pinks, mauves and violets, it is a majestic, luminous vision of the titular off-piste run in Val d’Isère, France. The work is filled with a wondrous sense of cool light akin to the crystalized shimmers of fresh powder. Soft-edged brushstrokes capture the dense texture of heavily-packed snow, by turns translucent and opaque. Tiny figures emerge in silhouette, their forms dwarfed by the vast frozen landscape. Each is depicted in specific detail but remains anonymous, alone within the unfathomable expanse of nature. The work is distinguished from its brother White Creep (1995-1996) through its singular intensity and drama: Doig’s brush marks are more strongly defined, adding to density to the shadows and emotional depth to the subject. Nostalgia lingers in the crisp air and blinding sunshine; paint becomes snow itself, offering a vivid meditation on the slipperiness of memory and vision.
Tour de Charvet is one of the last ski paintings Doig created in London in the mid-1990s. It followed on from his two Ski Jacket paintings of the previous year, one of which featured in his 1994 Turner Prize exhibition and was subsequently acquired by Tate, London. Inspired by ski posters and advertisements, these works marked an important new chapter within the artist’s early body of snowscapes. Where the artist had previously depicted Canadian landscapes framed through the veil of branches or snowfall, Doig’s ski paintings offered broad, open expanses of space. As the artist recalls, ‘When I made the first skiing paintings, they were made as a reaction to things I had made previously, paintings with a proliferation of matter on the surface of the canvas. I had wanted to get away from that device of always “looking through”, whether it be trees, branches or snow—in to the painting. It could have become manneristic. I wanted to make things more open’ (P. Doig, quoted in ‘Peter Doig: Twenty Questions (extract), 2001’, in A. Searle et al. (eds.), Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 135).
Tour de Charvet demonstrates this paradigm shift in Doig’s practice. The scene opens wide before the viewer, the crisp, clean air palpable in the work’s glistening sheen. Paint sweeps across the surface in elegant, lucid swathes, each brushstroke marbling colour and texture in its wake. ‘I wanted to make an open painting, not as open as say, Alex Katz’s paintings but to be up front like that. Just to see if it could work ... I made maybe two or three others like that, which are actually considered to be part of a series over time’ (P. Doig, quoted in ‘Peter Doig and Chris Ofili in Conversation’, Peter Doig, exh. cat. Tate Britain, London 2008, p. 114). During this period Doig also painted his Olin MK IV works, each defined by a similar sense of liberation.
In 1990, Doig had been particularly inspired by Claude Monet’s snowscapes, which he saw in an exhibition dedicated to the artist’s work at the Royal Academy of Arts, London that year. Tour de Charvet seems to offer a direct response to these works: its pale tonalities are contrasted with passages of inky blues and green which pick out the peaks and valleys. ‘I often use heightened colours to create a sense of the experience or mood or feeling of being there, but it’s not a scientific process,’ he explains. ‘I think the paintings always refer back to a reality that we all have experience of. We have all seen incredible sunsets. We’ve all experienced the sensation of light dropping and producing strange natural effects, and I think in a way I am using these natural phenomena and amplifying them through the materiality of paint and the activity of painting ... When I was making the “snow” paintings I was looking a lot at Monet, where there is this incredibly extreme, apparently exaggerated use of colour’ (P. Doig, quoted in A. Searle, ibid., p. 132). Doig’s soft translucent lighting also recalls other elements of Monet’s practice, including his studies of haystacks or Chartres Cathedral under various light and weather conditions.
Tour de Charvet, indeed, reveals the full breadth of Doig’s art-historical imagination. His engagement with abstract painting is evident in his handling of pictorial space: the work’s plummeting sense of depth invites comparison with Clyfford Still’s jagged panoramas or Gerhard Richter’s squeegeed canvases. The painting also has its legacy in the epic mountain-scapes of Félix Vallotton and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, with their open vistas and bold framing devices. Doig was particularly inspired by Kirchner’s late mountain paintings created in Switzerland, where he sought solace following his traumatising wartime experience. While the latter’s untouched landscapes positioned humankind as subservient to nature, however, Doig portrays a landscape shaped by man, the skiers trails carved into the mountainside. The painting takes on an existential, introspective dimension as the artist invites us to contemplate our place in the world. Ultimately, explained Doig, ‘snow somehow has this effect of drawing you inwards’ (P. Doig, quoted in R. Shiff, ‘Incidents’, in Peter Doig, exh. cat. Tate Britain, London 2008, p. 27).
A sublime icy vista bathed in dazzling winter sunlight, Peter Doig’s Tour de Charvet (1995) offers an absorbing expanse of snow cast in suffused, glowing colour. Rendered in a subtle palette of pinks, mauves and violets, it is a majestic, luminous vision of the titular off-piste run in Val d’Isère, France. The work is filled with a wondrous sense of cool light akin to the crystalized shimmers of fresh powder. Soft-edged brushstrokes capture the dense texture of heavily-packed snow, by turns translucent and opaque. Tiny figures emerge in silhouette, their forms dwarfed by the vast frozen landscape. Each is depicted in specific detail but remains anonymous, alone within the unfathomable expanse of nature. The work is distinguished from its brother White Creep (1995-1996) through its singular intensity and drama: Doig’s brush marks are more strongly defined, adding to density to the shadows and emotional depth to the subject. Nostalgia lingers in the crisp air and blinding sunshine; paint becomes snow itself, offering a vivid meditation on the slipperiness of memory and vision.
Tour de Charvet is one of the last ski paintings Doig created in London in the mid-1990s. It followed on from his two Ski Jacket paintings of the previous year, one of which featured in his 1994 Turner Prize exhibition and was subsequently acquired by Tate, London. Inspired by ski posters and advertisements, these works marked an important new chapter within the artist’s early body of snowscapes. Where the artist had previously depicted Canadian landscapes framed through the veil of branches or snowfall, Doig’s ski paintings offered broad, open expanses of space. As the artist recalls, ‘When I made the first skiing paintings, they were made as a reaction to things I had made previously, paintings with a proliferation of matter on the surface of the canvas. I had wanted to get away from that device of always “looking through”, whether it be trees, branches or snow—in to the painting. It could have become manneristic. I wanted to make things more open’ (P. Doig, quoted in ‘Peter Doig: Twenty Questions (extract), 2001’, in A. Searle et al. (eds.), Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 135).
Tour de Charvet demonstrates this paradigm shift in Doig’s practice. The scene opens wide before the viewer, the crisp, clean air palpable in the work’s glistening sheen. Paint sweeps across the surface in elegant, lucid swathes, each brushstroke marbling colour and texture in its wake. ‘I wanted to make an open painting, not as open as say, Alex Katz’s paintings but to be up front like that. Just to see if it could work ... I made maybe two or three others like that, which are actually considered to be part of a series over time’ (P. Doig, quoted in ‘Peter Doig and Chris Ofili in Conversation’, Peter Doig, exh. cat. Tate Britain, London 2008, p. 114). During this period Doig also painted his Olin MK IV works, each defined by a similar sense of liberation.
In 1990, Doig had been particularly inspired by Claude Monet’s snowscapes, which he saw in an exhibition dedicated to the artist’s work at the Royal Academy of Arts, London that year. Tour de Charvet seems to offer a direct response to these works: its pale tonalities are contrasted with passages of inky blues and green which pick out the peaks and valleys. ‘I often use heightened colours to create a sense of the experience or mood or feeling of being there, but it’s not a scientific process,’ he explains. ‘I think the paintings always refer back to a reality that we all have experience of. We have all seen incredible sunsets. We’ve all experienced the sensation of light dropping and producing strange natural effects, and I think in a way I am using these natural phenomena and amplifying them through the materiality of paint and the activity of painting ... When I was making the “snow” paintings I was looking a lot at Monet, where there is this incredibly extreme, apparently exaggerated use of colour’ (P. Doig, quoted in A. Searle, ibid., p. 132). Doig’s soft translucent lighting also recalls other elements of Monet’s practice, including his studies of haystacks or Chartres Cathedral under various light and weather conditions.
Tour de Charvet, indeed, reveals the full breadth of Doig’s art-historical imagination. His engagement with abstract painting is evident in his handling of pictorial space: the work’s plummeting sense of depth invites comparison with Clyfford Still’s jagged panoramas or Gerhard Richter’s squeegeed canvases. The painting also has its legacy in the epic mountain-scapes of Félix Vallotton and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, with their open vistas and bold framing devices. Doig was particularly inspired by Kirchner’s late mountain paintings created in Switzerland, where he sought solace following his traumatising wartime experience. While the latter’s untouched landscapes positioned humankind as subservient to nature, however, Doig portrays a landscape shaped by man, the skiers trails carved into the mountainside. The painting takes on an existential, introspective dimension as the artist invites us to contemplate our place in the world. Ultimately, explained Doig, ‘snow somehow has this effect of drawing you inwards’ (P. Doig, quoted in R. Shiff, ‘Incidents’, in Peter Doig, exh. cat. Tate Britain, London 2008, p. 27).