catalog text
VICTOR VIOLLET LEDUC
French, 1848-1901
Paysage du Mide de la France
Oil on panel | Signed lower left "V. Viollet LeDuc" with illegible inscriptions
Item # 111NZM11Q
A fine small landscape scene in oil on panel of a lone woman plucking flowers from the cold fields of fall. The complex palette is rich with a mustard hue to the autumnal grasses while the trees and bushes along the horizon are executed in a low-saturation green before the colorful village buildings. Executed by the French Barbizon painter Victor Viollet Leduc, this fine painting shows a careful and rather complex brushwork throughout, the minute strokes and moments of heavy impasto giving the understated tones a notable richness in detail.
The reverse of the painting retains an early label in script that remains partially legible and refers to the living dates of landscape painter and architect Etienne Adolphe Viollet Leduc (French, 1817-1878), gives title to the painting and refers to both Nice and Etretat, France. The painting is signed in the lower left corner of the front "V. Viollet leDuc" with some illegible notations below.
Measurements: 7 7/16" H X 10 1/2" W [panel]; 13 1/4" H x 16 1/4" W [frame]
Condition Report:
Professionally conserved: all old overpaint removed and carefully executed again [lower left quadrant: a horizontal strip from the edge of the frame past the shoulder range of the hunched woman, a triangular segment immediately above the signature], touchups to extreme edges of the painting where the frame rubs, right side of the picture with several thin horizontal segments of overpaint; see UV images for clear visibility of any conservation; sealed in a traditional Damar varnish; housed in a good carved giltwood frame from the middle of the 20th century with minor wear/chipping.