René Archille Rousseau-Decelle (French, 1881-1964)
PROPERTY OF THE WESTERVELT COMPANY
René Archille Rousseau-Decelle (French, 1881-1964)

Le pesage de Longchamp

细节
René Archille Rousseau-Decelle (French, 1881-1964)
Le pesage de Longchamp
signed and dated 'R. Rousseau-Decelle./1910' (lower right)
oil on canvas
56 ¾ x 108 in. (144.1 x 274.3 cm.)
来源
Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 9-10 May 1977, lot 101.
with M. R. Schweitzer Gallery, New York.
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner, 1977.
展览
Paris, Salon, 1910, no. 1624, illustrated p. 33.

拍品专文

René Rousseau-Decelle studied with the master of French Academic painting, William Bouguereau, in the waning years of the older artist’s life. It is clear that the young Rousseau-Decelle quickly moved away from the tightly-painted images of French peasant girls and threw himself headlong into the world of the haute bourgeoisie of fin-de-siècle Paris.
Like his master, Rousseau-Decelle found a very commercially successful niche and adhered to that formula throughout his career. He specialized in very large canvases of contemporary crowd-filled scenes, and these were very well-received in the reviews of the various Paris Salons. Racing scenes appear frequently in his oeuvre, but he treated other leisure activities as themes in his large-scale paintings as well, as in his celebrated 1909 Palais de Glace (lot 31).
In the present work, Rousseau-Decelle takes us to the racetrack on the edges of the Bois to Boulogne. Considered a thoroughly modern outing, a day at the races at the turn of the twentieth century provided the expanding leisure classes yet another opportunity to see and be seen, to show off their colorful and elaborate wardrobes and perhaps engage in a friendly wager with friends and new acquaintances. The track at Longchamp, located in the heart of Paris, provided Rousseau-Decelle with his the sort of bustling spectacle he was so adept at capturing.
Rousseau-Decelle was not the first modern French artist to fall under the spell of the racetrack; both Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas spent time sketching at Longchamp in the late 1860s, absorbing the atmosphere of the bustling crowds and chic attendees, affording them at least as much, if not more attention than the actual participants in the race itself. The crowd is the principal fascination, and the viewer's eye is drawn especially to the women in their oversized floral hats and brightly colored costumes, as well as the group of three children the mid-center foreground, depicted in rapt fascination with that modern invention, the camera. The dappled sunlight on the ground leads the eye from one group of figures to the other, moving gradually backwards until the viewer becomes conscious of the actual leading players in this artistic play, the horses with their jockeys up. The middle ground is punctuated by carefully placed figures of elegant men impeccably dressed in black – one to the left, one in the center and one on the right – serving as solid anchors in a sea of color and light.
It has been suggested that the artist included actual portraits in his composition; Edmond Blanc (1856-1920) was a well-known horse breeder and politician, and was so enamored of the sport that he built the racecourse at Saint Cloud in 1901. August Armand de la Force (1879-1961), who would have been of an age with the artist, was a noted historian and the scion of an old French noble family. A curious addition would be Georges Achille-Fould (1868-1956), a noted artist, best known for her portrait of Rosa Bonheur at her easel.
Whatever the identity of the particular members of this animated scene, the artist has successfully shared his vision of a favorite leisure activity very much in vogue with the upper middle classes in Paris at the turn of the last century.

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