Landscape with Figure

Philip Leslie Hale’s Landscape with Figure is a quickly sketched glimpse of a narrow stream near the rural Normandy village of Giverny, France. Made on a small, easily carried wood panel, it manifests the rapid work and quick-sketch immediacy of a pochade, the French term for a pocket-sized painting made rapidly on-site to record a fleeting scene. Hale’s subject, however, is a rather timeless one. The river meanders through the sun-dappled summer landscape as a woman, almost lost to view in the vigorously painted scene, kneels in the foreground to wash laundry in the flowing water.

In the summer of 1888, when Hale made this work, Giverny had started to attract international artists and would soon become an important artists' colony. Among the attractions of the picturesque area were abundant subjects for landscape paintings and the presence of Claude Monet (1840–1926), master of the bold use of pure, unblended strokes of sunlit color that is a hallmark of the movement known as impressionism. Hale would soon develop his own brand of impressionism, in which figures are nearly dissolved in auras of saturated golden light. However, this work, possibly one of the first Hale made in Giverny, is a more tentative experiment in an aesthetic that in the late 1880s still struck many Americans as thoroughly revolutionary. It blends the spontaneous, open brushwork and quick, on-site creation of impressionism with the traditional approach to color values Hale absorbed in his academic training. The yellows he used to represent the distant field in bright sunlight, for example, are countered by conventional dark browns—rather than impressionist blue and purple tints—to suggest shadows.

The streams that flowed near the village were popular subjects among the first artist-visitors to Giverny, as can be seen in works by Theodore Wendel (TF1987.13), Louis Ritter (TF 1992.129), and Willard Metcalf (TF1989.6). Like Hale, many of these artists arrived there during summer breaks from their studies in Paris, and they indulged their interest in landscape as an escape from the academic curriculum’s emphasis on the human figure. In views of local waterways by such “Givernyites” as flowing water injects movement into otherwise static scenes of the unpeopled countryside. Hale’s painting stands out for its introduction of the human figure into this bucolic setting, but the figure is almost incidental to the landscape and as quickly sketched with an emphasis on the play of light and dark.

Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915 (Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 1–November 1, 1992; April 1–October 31, 1993; April 1–October 30, 1994; April 1–October 31, 1995. [exh. cat.]

Giverny: une impression américaine (Giverny, An American Impression), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 1, 1998.

D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002 (on exhibit partial extended run: June 23–November 30, 2002).

Studied Abroad: Painted Impressions from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 6, 2003–April 4, 2004.

Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 1, 2007; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, July 21–October 14, 2007. [exh. cat.]

Impressionist Giverny: The Americans, 1885–1915, Selections from the Terra Foundation for American Art, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Florence Griswold Museum of Art, Old Lyme, Connecticut, May 3–July 27, 2008; Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, New York, August 23, 2008–January 4, 2009.

Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan with the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan, October 9–November 28, 2010; The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, December 7, 2010–February 17, 2011; The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan, February 25–April 10, 2011. [exh. cat.]

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 167; pl. 23, p. 168 (color).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 167; pl. 23, p. 168 (color).

Gomes, Rosalie. Impressions of Giverny: A Painter's Paradise 1883–1914. San Francisco, California: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995. Text p. 31; pl. 24, p. 39 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. et al. Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915. (exh. cat. Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. Text. p. 207 (checklist); cat. p. 86 (color).

Mauvoisin, Jacques and Gwenaëlle Ledot. Écrivins de Normandie. Saint-Lô, France: Normandie Magazine, 2007. Ill. p. 89 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., Shunsuke Kijima and Sanjiro Minamikawa. Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism. (exh. cat. Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, and The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art). Fukuoka, Japan: The Nishinippon Shimbun, 2010. Text cat. no. 21, pp. 70 (in Japanese), 182 (in English); ill. p.70 (color).