Paintings of 1924: 3 Landscapes

This third and final article reviewing notable paintings of a century ago covers landscapes in a surprising range of styles.

Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), Château Gaillard at Andelys (1924), oil on canvas, 82 x 65 cm, Musée cantonal des beaux-arts, Lausanne, Switzerland. Wikimedia Commons.

Félix Vallotton’s view of Château Gaillard at Les Andelys is one of his late transcendental paintings. The ruins of this mediaeval castle tower above this village in northern France. Les Andelys had been the birthplace of Nicolas Poussin in 1594, and grew popular with landscape painters during the nineteenth century.

Robert Bevan (1865–1925), Aldwych (1924), oil on canvas, 62.2 x 81.3 cm, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Wikimedia Commons.

Robert Bevan, one of the Camden Town Group, painted this view of Aldwych in central London. This is a crescent off the Strand, to the east of Charing Cross. At the left is a motor omnibus, and drinking at the water-trough beneath the memorial is one of the remaining working horses of London, which by now were well in decline.

Robert Bevan (1865–1925), Mount Stephen (1924), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Bevan’s Mount Stephen from 1924 shows one of the farms close to Luppitt in East Devon, presumably painted during one of Bevan’s summer visits. By this time, the artist had developed cancer of the stomach. He died the following summer, just a month short of his sixtieth birthday.

Nikolai Astrup (1880–1928), The Befring Mountain Farms (c 1924-28), oil on canvas with woodblock printing, 89 x 110 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

In Norway, Nikolai Astrup’s rugged rock peaks become the head of a giant owl, peering down at his moonlit unreality. The everyday act of milking a goat becomes strange when it takes place in the dead of night. Marsh marigold flowers, typically seen in the summer sunshine, still glow yellow under his bright yellow moon.

George Bellows (1882–1925), Summer Fantasy (1924), oil on canvas, 91.4 × 121.9 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Painted just a year before George Bellows’ sudden death, his Summer Fantasy contrasts with almost all his preceding paintings. Using a formal and classical composition, he brings together images of archetypes in a lush green park, with the Hudson River behind. Ladies in fine, flowing white dresses promenade with their husbands. Horses and their riders, some in the elegance of side-saddle, cross in the middle distance. The sails of boats on the river are backlit by the setting sun.

This has been interpreted as an allegory of life: from the baby in the pram in the right foreground, through marriage, to the final years. But we will never know where it was going to lead Bellows’ brush in the future. For in the New Year of 1925, he suffered appendicitis, which he left untreated. This led to peritonitis, from which he died on 8 January.

Théo van Rysselberghe (1862–1926), Les Fonds de Saint-Clair (1924), oil on linen, 46 x 55 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.

Théo van Rysselberghe’s Les Fonds de Saint-Clair looks likely to have been painted in a single plein air session, with areas where the application of paint has been so light that the canvas texture shows through. This is possibly a picturesque ravine near the north coast of France, to the east of Le Havre.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Pink Palm at Le Cannet (1924), oil on canvas, 49.2 x 47.1 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Pierre Bonnard had moved south from Paris, and spent much of his later life living in Le Cannet, where he painted at least two variations of this view of a Pink Palm at Le Cannet.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Landscape with Mountains (1924), oil on canvas, 40 x 59 cm, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. The Athenaeum.

Bonnard’s Landscape with Mountains is a view further inland.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), En Bateau, La Promenade en Mer (In a Boat, Promenade at Sea) (c 1924), oil on canvas, 27 x 46 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

With the increasing time he spent on the French Mediterranean coast, maritime motifs become more frequent in Bonnard’s paintings from this time. In a Boat, Promenade at Sea shows three figures who appear to be out for a ‘promenade’ inshore.

Meanwhile, Lovis Corinth was painting avidly at his mountain chalet near Walchensee, in Bavaria.

Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), The Jochberg at Walchensee (1924), oil on canvas, 65 × 78 cm, Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

The Jochberg at Walchensee shows this 1567 metre high mountain dividing the Walchensee from the Kochelsee.

Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Walchensee, Vegetable Garden (1924), oil on canvas, 70 × 90 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Corinth’s view of Walchensee, Vegetable Garden was painted away from his normal vantage point, to include the colours and textures of this vegetable patch.

Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Walchensee (1924), watercolour on vellum, 50.4 × 67.7 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, Corinth’s Walchensee is a watercolour sketch of the lake reportedly painted on vellum.