Guillaumin – Morning Mood at the Tip of the Ile de Besse (Agay)

Armand Guillaumin
(1841 Paris – 1927 Orly, Val-de-Marne)

MORNING MOOD AT THE TIP OF THE ILE DE BESSE (AGAY)

Painted ca. 1901
Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm
Signed lower left: Guillaumin

Provenance: Galerie Drouant-David, Paris; French private collection

Expertise by the Comité Guillaumin (Dominique Fabiani, Stéphanie Chardeau-Botteri, Jacques de la Béraudière). Scheduled for inclusion in the second volume of the catalogue raisonné.

Born into poverty, attending art school was out of the question for Guillaumin. He taught himself to paint and draw more or less single-handedly.
It was not until 1891 that winning 100,000 gold francs enabled him to work freely and independently. He no longer had to worry about selling his paintings and was able to experiment boldly.
In 1893, he moved to rural Crozant and founded an artists’ colony. He also travelled regularly to the Côte d’Azur, where he was particularly taken with the red cliffs of Agay and the picturesque trees bent by the wind.