HENRI-JOSEPH HARPIGNIES (1819-1916)

A DESIGN FOR A DECORATIVE PANEL
Signed to l.l. of left-hand landscape detail h harpignies 94.
Pen & ink with watercolour
19.2 x 11.5 cm | 32 x 24.1 cm (Framed)
 
PROVENANCE:
With Kate de Rothschild, London;
From whom purchased by the present owners
 
 
 
 
The present work is an intriguing and unusual example of Harpignies' watercolours, with two of his customary monochrome-wash landscapes - the larger one featuring a presumed self-portrait - and decorative details, combined to form an Art-Deco panel design. A comparable example is presently with Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London, of almost identical dimensions, possibly dated to the same year as ours. A further sheet, again of the same dimensions and a similar composition, was on the art market in Paris in 1995, which was also dated to 1894, suggesting that the three were perhaps part of a larger decorative scheme which Harpignies devised. 
 
 
Harpignies was a pupil of the landscape painter Jean Achard, with whom he travelled throughout France. Between the years 1849-52 and 1863-5, Harpignies spent time in Italy. In a lineage of artists influenced by Jean-Baptiste Corot and the early artists of the Barbizon School, Harpignies was among the most significant: despite practising a generation after the 1830 School, Harpignies nevertheless concentrated primarily on landscape painting in a Barbizon manner, even working in the Forest of Fontainbleu as these artistic antecedents had done, from 1854 onwards. He worked in both oils and watercolour, developing a distinctive hand in his use of the latter medium: they are characterised by brisk brushstrokes, often with pale, watery pigments, wherein much of the paper is left uncoloured or only thinly-painted to create atmospheric effects.