Paintings of Honfleur: Seurat to Vallotton
In the first of these two articles showing nineteenth century paintings of the small coastal town of Honfleur, I had reached the 1860s, just before the birth of Impressionism. I start today’s paintings with those of the forgotten French Impressionist, Adolphe-Félix Cals.
Cals had achieved modest success at the Salon in the 1860s, became friends with Corot and Jongkind, and in 1871 started to paint regularly at Honfleur, where he got to know Boudin and Monet. Cals moved to the town in 1873, and met other Impressionists at the Saint-Siméon Farm run there by ‘Mother Toutain’.
Adolphe-Félix Cals (1810–1880), Fisherman (1874), oil on canvas, 25 x 31 cm, Musée Eugène-Boudin de Honfleur, Honfleur, France. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d’Orsay) / Jean-Pierre Lagiewski.
Cals’ Fisherman (1874) was almost certainly shown at the First Impressionist Exhibition, and appears to be a view of sea cliffs on the coast near Honfleur.
Adolphe-Félix Cals (1810–1880), Landscape with a Farmyard (date not known), oil on panel, 24.6 x 32.5 cm, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The Athenaeum.
His undated Landscape with a Farmyard was probably painted at or near Saint-Siméon, the subject of many of Cals’ paintings after 1871.
Adolphe-Félix Cals (1810–1880), Saint-Siméon or The Big Farm at Honfleur (1876), oil on canvas, 35 x 54 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Caen, France. Wikimedia Commons.
In Saint-Siméon or The Big Farm at Honfleur (1876), he shows an empty easel set up in the orchard at the farm, with several figures scattered around. His plainly visible brushstrokes appear to be organising themselves, much as Vincent van Gogh’s did nearly twenty years later.
Adolphe-Félix Cals (1810–1880), A Sunday in Saint-Siméon (1876), oil on canvas, 60 x 120 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
A Sunday in Saint-Siméon (1876) shows another view of the farm’s orchards.
Adolphe-Félix Cals (1810–1880), Honfleur Alley (1877), oil on canvas, 43 x 59 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.
Cals’ wonderful Honfleur Alley from 1877 has more fine detail, but remains thoroughly Impressionist in style.
Adolphe-Félix Cals (1810–1880), Sailors in Saint-Siméon (1877), oil on canvas, 42 x 58 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
In his Sailors in Saint-Siméon from 1877, the fruit trees show Corot’s influence.
After the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879, when he was in his late sixties, Cals’ health deteriorated rapidly, and he died the following year in Honfleur.
Although the town continued to be visited and painted after that, its next artistic milestone was in the Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat. Each summer from 1885 to 1890, with the exception of 1887, Seurat left Paris and spent a working holiday in a coastal town on the shore of the Channel, where he painted that town and the sea. In 1886, his chosen town was Honfleur, where he painted a total of seven Divisionist landscapes.
Georges Seurat (1859-1891), Corner of a Basin, Honfleur (1886), oil on canvas, 79.5 x 63 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Wikimedia Commons.
Corner of a Basin, Honfleur (1886) shows a ship, bows towards the viewer, tied alongside a quay, starboard side to, and looking head-on. There are some buildings on the quay, which are cut off by the left edge of the canvas, and immediately in front and to the right of the viewer are the bows of a sailing ship, also moored.
Although the painting isn’t as clear as it might be, the ship in the centre of the view appears to be a cargo vessel with both sails (masts, rigging) and the funnel for a steam engine. Seurat paints it with a distinctive livery of white superstructure, a white line at the base of the fo’c’sle, on a black hull, which is red from just above the waterline down. (It’s likely that the ship is only lightly laden, hence high out of the water.) The funnel is white, with a broad black band at the top.
Georges Seurat (1859-1891), The Maria, Honfleur (1886), oil on canvas, 53 x 63.5 cm, National Museum, Prague. Wikimedia Commons.
The Maria, Honfleur (1886) appears to be a reverse view of that previous painting, in that the viewer is stood on the same quay, but is on the far side of the ship looking in the opposite direction. The ship is now on the left, and the distant buildings on the right, cut off at the right edge of the canvas.
In her monograph on Seurat, Michelle Foa argues that the two ships shown are in fact one and the same. However the Maria (which apparently provides a service to ‘Londres’ via Southampton, according to words painted on the side of the buildings) is quite different in appearance. In this second view, the ship is also shown bows towards the viewer, so the ship must have changed between the two paintings.
Next, it’s a different type of ship, with simpler sailing rigging, and more dependent on its steam engine. It’s now heavier laden, and sitting lower in the water. It has a different livery, with all-white fo’c’sle, and a white line lower down towards the waterline, on a black hull. Its superstructure is also white. The Maria’s funnel is cream in colour, with no black band.
There are other differences in details between the two paintings, such as the presence of a street lamp at the edge of the quay in the second, which raise questions as to whether these are necessarily a simple pair of reversed views, which Foa claims. However they do suggest such reversal, which is an unusual way of pairing landscape views.
Georges Seurat died suddenly five years later.
My final paintings come from two unexpected artists: Félix Vallotton and Édouard Vuillard, who had been Nabis prior to 1900. In the early years of the twentieth century, Vallotton painted several landscapes in and around Honfleur.
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), La Mare, Honfleur (The Pond) (1909), media and dimensions not known, Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland. Wikimedia Commons.
Vallotton’s La Mare, Honfleur from 1909 shows a pond at night near the town. The black plane of the water has ripples travelling from a point at the right edge. In the left foreground is a stand of long grass and weeds bowed over in an arc, and behind the blossom on a tree glows in the dark.
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), Honfleur in Fog (1911), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy, France. Image by Ji-Elle, via Wikimedia Commons.
His unconventional view of Honfleur in Fog from 1911 looks down from Mont-Joli to the west of the town centre, to capture exactly the sort of transient effects that had been the concern of the Impressionists who had painted there forty years earlier.
Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), At The Pavillons in Cricqueboeuf. In Front of the House (1911), distemper on canvas, 212 x 79.8 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.
That same year, fellow Nabi Édouard Vuillard visited the small town of Cricqueboeuf just to the west of Honfleur, where he painted At The Pavillons in Cricqueboeuf. In Front of the House in glue distemper, one of the traditional media from the late Middle Ages that was revived by the Nabis.
Honfleur now houses one of the finest collections of the paintings of its son, Eugène Boudin, who was so influential on Impressionism.
