Gobillard – Garden with Irises

Paule Gobillard
(1869 Quimperlé – 1946 Paris)

GARDEN WITH IRISES

Oil on canvas, 33 x 41 cm
Signed lower right: Paule Gobillard

Provenance:
From family collection

As the niece of Berthe Morisot, who painted at least ten portraits of her, Paule Gobillard grew up in the inner circle of the Impressionists. After the early death of her parents and her aunt, Paule Gobillard lived with her younger sister Jeannie in the house of her cousin Julie Manet, Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet’s only daughter. Older than Julie and Jeannie, she took on responsibility for the two younger girls at an early age. Stéphane Mallarmé and Auguste Renoir acted as guardians, overseeing the young ladies’ education and regularly inviting them to spend their holidays with their families. On these occasions, they spent a lot of time painting outdoors. In 1900, there was a double wedding: Paule’s sister Jeannie married Paul Valéry, and Julie Manet married Ernest Rouart (painter, pupil of Degas and son of the famous collector and painter Henri Rouart). Paule moved in with her sister and spent her summers with Julie at the Château du Mesnil. She remained unmarried and concentrated entirely on painting.

“I think of the walks we took from Mézy to Le Mesnil when Papa (Eugène Manet) and Maman (Berthe Morisot) were planning to buy it; at that time, it seemed like paradise to me to live here,‘ Julie Manet confided in her diary in 1899 (p. 193), continuing, ’It is a delightful, very special property (…) very French.” Paule Gobillard was a frequent guest and painted beautiful, impressionistic, light-filled landscape paintings in light pastel tones in the gardens of Mézy and Le Mesnil, which are among her best works. ‘Garden with Irises’ could also be a work by Berthe Morisot and would then cost not five but six figures. Especially in her landscape paintings, Gobillard comes very close to her aunt and, in some cases, Auguste Renoir in terms of her painting style.

From 1906 onwards, she exhibited regularly as a permanent member of the Salon d’Automne, as well as in the Durand Ruel, Petit, Druet and Bernheim Jeune galleries and internationally in Japan, the USA and Denmark. After her death, Durand-Ruel showed a retrospective of her work in his gallery.