Mod Sanctuary Antiques and Fine Art Gallery

SCARCE GUSTAVE VIDAL (FRANCE, 1895-1966) EARLY 20TH CENTURY VINTAGE
SIGNED ORIGINAL POST-IMPRESSIONIST OIL on CANVAS
LANDSCAPE of FRENCH SOUTHERN
COUNTRYSIDE with MOTHER & CHILD, CYPRESS
& CEDAR TREES, RED TILE ROOFED,
PROVINCIAL HOUSES, DIRT ROAD & DISTANT
MOUNTAINS, in ORIGINAL PERIOD WOODEN
CHIP-CARVED, GESSOED FRAME
[Featuring viscous, tactile, heavy impasto paint applied with both palette knife and artist's brushes]
(Circa 1920-1935)
Early 20th century, pre-WWII French Post-Impressionist, heavy, impasto landscape oil paintings on canvas depicting French rural life and French provincial landscapes

DIMENSIONS:

Frame: 23 3⁄4" Height x 27 1⁄2" Width

Image: 17 1⁄2" Height x 21" Width

Weight: 12 lbs. 8 oz.

DESCRIPTION:

Offered for your review and consideration is this estate fresh and only recently discovered in a well-appointed North Shore, Massachusetts home, early 20th century French Post-Impressionist oil on canvas by the well-listed French painter Gustave Vidal. The painting was literally covered with layers of dust on its verso, which has since been carefully removed. The work is clearly signed by the artist in paint 'Gustave Vidal' in the lower right corner of the pictorial field. The oil paint is heavily applied and has an impasto, highly tactile and viscous quality, being applied with both palette knives and brushes. The scene is a favorite one of Vidal, being a provincial, rural, bucolic and eerily quiet view of the south of France near the rise of the French Alps, which can be seen on the horizon. A woman can be seen walking down a dirt road holding the hand of a young child with clusters of draught resistant cypress and cedar trees to the right, next to a red tiled country home, with another stucco sided and red tiled roof villa in the distance. Gustave Vidal and other early, as well as late French Post-Impressionist painters favored the south of France, not because of earlier visits by the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh but because the south of France, the rural, provincial portion, far away from the sprawling urban metropolis of Paris, never really seemed to have changed very much and still looked as if it was locked in time or at least with a 19th century appearance. With warm, glowing sunlight and dry, arid conditions in which to realize these 'en pelin aire' landscape paintings out-of-doors, the south of France readily lent itself to these French Post-Impressionist painters, such as Gustave Vidal, who wanted to capture this veritable 'time-capsule' and to forever preserved the way slowed down, simple French provincial life at least used to be, without dirt roads becoming paved with asphalt and automobiles traversing around everywhere, replacing omnipresent pedestrians and horse and carriages. This pre-WWII oil on canvas is a scene often painted by Gustave Vidal, with its formal composition and figurative elements of rural buildings, trees that favored the southern Mediterranean climate and French rural fold or farmers and their families, going about their business as if unnoticed. This intimate portrait of their now vanishing lives, is frozen in place and captured in paint for all to see. Tremendous physicality, plasticity and terrific handling of the paint, as if wrestled with on the canvas, recalls the surfaces of another Dutch Post-Impressionist landscape painter, none other than Vincent Van Gogh, who also favored this physical style of painting, with his own heavy, impasto surfaces. Van Gogh is said to have painted largely standing up, putting the entire force of his body into the work. I think the same can be said of Gustave Vidal. The painting's surfaces are undamaged and there's no crazing, crackling, paint loss or repairs to the canvas, old or new. There's also no 'in-painting' old or new. This is an absolutely untouched and estate fresh work of art and signed period oil on canvas that certainly could be professionally cleaned by trained, capable hands, in order not to 'skin' it but to only remove the now fatigued original Damar varnish layer still covering the painting. We've elected to leave the oil painting as we found it and as it was discovered in the home, where it is said to have been for as long as anyone associated with the generational estate, could remember. Exhilarating. Very fine. Absolutely untouched. Simply breathtaking.