La Sieste - La Charette. Siesta - The Haycart. Also known as 'Repos sur les Quais de la Seine - Resting on the Banks of the Seine. by Armand Guillaumin, 1841-1927

Armand Guillaumin, 1841-1927
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La Sieste - La Charette. Siesta - The Haycart. Also known as 'Repos sur les Quais de la Seine - Resting on the Banks of the Seine.

Original lithograph in eight colours.1889/1900. Signed and dated '89 in the stone (no hand signed impressions were issued). From the edition of c.100 impressions. Commissioned by Vollard for his third but unpublished 'Album d'Estampes de la Galerie Vollard' c.1899. Drawn at the Atelier Clot, Paris c.1899 but the edition was not printed for Vollard or Mme Guillaumin until some years later.

Ref:Exposition Guillaumin, Musee de Belfort, catalogue de G.Kraemer no 26.

Superb impression on chine appliqué (laid china paper). Excellent condition. With the full backing sheet in wove. Image drawn to the full china sheet size. Image/chine: 256x358mm. 10 1/8 x 14 1/8ins. Overall sheet: 382x497mm. 15 1/8 x 19 5/8ins.

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Guillaumin's composition of 'The Siesta - The Hay Cart' is in many ways an archetypal expression of the whole Impressionist aesthetic - a realist theme, free handling of the strokes and focussed on the capture of the momentary sensation of light, colour and the atmosphere of the 'open-air'. It is one of the most completely Impressionist works in the medium of the colour lithograph.

Armand Guillaumin was at first just a part-time painter, fitting his art in around his work in the civil service in Paris. However, he began to exhibit it regularly and it immediately attracted much admiration from the other Impressionist painters, especially Pissarro and Cézanne. In the 1860's he frequently visited the house of the great patron of Impressionism and amateur artist Dr Gachet in Auvers. Gachet introduced him to making etchings (as he did Cézanne and Pissarro) but it was not until some 20 years later that he began to be interested in lithography as a medium, at the instigation of the great print publisher Vollard.

It was Guillaumin's sense of colour, his deft handling of stroke and his feeling for colour which was most admired by the other impressionist painters. It was just these qualities which are instilled into this lithograph. In the early 1890's he had inherited some money and given-up his government work to concentrate his time on painting. When Seurat and Signac began to develop their ideas of 'divisionist' colour Guillaumin was a keen supporter, and by the end of the 1890's had started to incorporate elements of divisionism, or 'pointillisme', into his own painting. This idea of the separation of colour is closely allied to the way that colour is handled on separate stones in colour lithography, and the sparkle and clarity of tone that it creates is very strongly visible in 'La Sieste', above.