Beach Scene - La Grande Plage
50.8 cms x 66 cms (20 ins x 26 ins)
Signed and on verso titled on a label
Lot offered for sale by Heffel, Vancouver at the auction event "Spring 2007 Live auction" held on Wed, May 23, 2007.
Lot 183
Lot 183
Estimate: CAD $60,000 - $80,000
Realised: CAD $207,000
Realised: CAD $207,000
Lot description - from the online catalogue*
Provenance:
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, 1956
Private Collection, Ontario, acquired from the above in 1958
Literature:
Guy Viau, "Paroles de Peintre", Cahiers d'Essai no. 2, January 1960, pages 25 - 27
Louise Dompierre, John Lyman 1886 - 1967, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1986, similar works entitled The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz reproduced page 138 and The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz II reproduced page 139
Notes:
John Lyman's stunning Beach Scene - La grande plage belongs to a tradition of beach scenes that goes as far back as Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet. The idea to spend the summer holidays at the seaside is a modern idea. Even the French historian Jules Michelet, in his book La Mer, 1860 was hesitant to see anything else other than a form of hydrotherapy in sea baths. But this attitude was soon obsolete, when the railways were established and it was possible to reach easily by trains (les trains de plaisir, as they were called) the beaches of the Normandy coast at Deauville and Trouville, near Dieppe. The painters followed the trend and transformed the traditional marines with ships at sea into much more casual views of high fashion ladies under their sunshades relaxing at the seaside. Later, the Côte d'Azur became the principal pole of attraction. The light was brighter and the colors more intense, which were two factors of consequence for painters.
In 1926, Lyman painted a similar view, The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz, in the southwest of France, near the Spanish border. It is possible that our painting (not dated) is from a similar period and location. There is a "grande plage" nearby, at Biarritz.
What is striking in Beach Scene - La grande plage is the impression of a completely random arrangement of people, nevertheless organized in a strict composition. John Lyman used to say that abstract art was a facile way out of the problem of composition in figurative painting. In an interview he gave to Guy Viau in 1960, he said: "Abstract art could very well be the language of our times, of a society on the verge of collapse...But I think that there will always be minds more attracted by external reality than by abstraction. Sure enough art is a reflection of the artist's interior life, but how to grasp it if not through the image he constructs of the exterior life?" Certainly Lyman saw himself as belonging to this category of people, for whom external reality represented an endless source of visual enjoyment. The real challenge was then to make a well-organized composition with the human figure and its environment. In Beach Scene - La grande plage, as in The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz, 1926 (which was also in the collection of Dr. Max Stern at the Dominion Gallery) the problem of composition is compounded by the fact that you have many people and no clear limits on each side - like an architectural construction or a tree - to enclose the presentation. In fact what does the trick here is the colour. If one follows, for instance, the careful distribution of the pink and the white, one can find out how well-organized the painting is. The pink of the big umbrella in the center shading a dressed man (Lyman himself?) reappears in the bathing suit of the sitting woman on the right, and in one of the girls fighting on the left. The same exercise could be done with the white. The white bathrobe of the elderly couple on the right is balanced by the white shirt of the lying man on the left. The paradox then, is that it is through the formal element of colour that composition is achieved here, and not by the subject matter which, by definition, is random and disorganized. It is no surprise then, that Lyman's painting was well appreciated by our abstractionist painters - both Borduas and Molinari had enormous respect for his achievement.
We thank Dr. François-Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay.
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, 1956
Private Collection, Ontario, acquired from the above in 1958
Literature:
Guy Viau, "Paroles de Peintre", Cahiers d'Essai no. 2, January 1960, pages 25 - 27
Louise Dompierre, John Lyman 1886 - 1967, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1986, similar works entitled The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz reproduced page 138 and The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz II reproduced page 139
Notes:
John Lyman's stunning Beach Scene - La grande plage belongs to a tradition of beach scenes that goes as far back as Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet. The idea to spend the summer holidays at the seaside is a modern idea. Even the French historian Jules Michelet, in his book La Mer, 1860 was hesitant to see anything else other than a form of hydrotherapy in sea baths. But this attitude was soon obsolete, when the railways were established and it was possible to reach easily by trains (les trains de plaisir, as they were called) the beaches of the Normandy coast at Deauville and Trouville, near Dieppe. The painters followed the trend and transformed the traditional marines with ships at sea into much more casual views of high fashion ladies under their sunshades relaxing at the seaside. Later, the Côte d'Azur became the principal pole of attraction. The light was brighter and the colors more intense, which were two factors of consequence for painters.
In 1926, Lyman painted a similar view, The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz, in the southwest of France, near the Spanish border. It is possible that our painting (not dated) is from a similar period and location. There is a "grande plage" nearby, at Biarritz.
What is striking in Beach Scene - La grande plage is the impression of a completely random arrangement of people, nevertheless organized in a strict composition. John Lyman used to say that abstract art was a facile way out of the problem of composition in figurative painting. In an interview he gave to Guy Viau in 1960, he said: "Abstract art could very well be the language of our times, of a society on the verge of collapse...But I think that there will always be minds more attracted by external reality than by abstraction. Sure enough art is a reflection of the artist's interior life, but how to grasp it if not through the image he constructs of the exterior life?" Certainly Lyman saw himself as belonging to this category of people, for whom external reality represented an endless source of visual enjoyment. The real challenge was then to make a well-organized composition with the human figure and its environment. In Beach Scene - La grande plage, as in The Beach, St-Jean-de-Luz, 1926 (which was also in the collection of Dr. Max Stern at the Dominion Gallery) the problem of composition is compounded by the fact that you have many people and no clear limits on each side - like an architectural construction or a tree - to enclose the presentation. In fact what does the trick here is the colour. If one follows, for instance, the careful distribution of the pink and the white, one can find out how well-organized the painting is. The pink of the big umbrella in the center shading a dressed man (Lyman himself?) reappears in the bathing suit of the sitting woman on the right, and in one of the girls fighting on the left. The same exercise could be done with the white. The white bathrobe of the elderly couple on the right is balanced by the white shirt of the lying man on the left. The paradox then, is that it is through the formal element of colour that composition is achieved here, and not by the subject matter which, by definition, is random and disorganized. It is no surprise then, that Lyman's painting was well appreciated by our abstractionist painters - both Borduas and Molinari had enormous respect for his achievement.
We thank Dr. François-Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay.
Most realised prices include the Buyer's Premium of 18-25%, but not the HST/GST Tax.
(*) Text and/or Image might be subject matter of Copyright. Check with Heffel auction house for permission to use.
(*) Text and/or Image might be subject matter of Copyright. Check with Heffel auction house for permission to use.