He took nature and shaped it with his brushes as deliberately as he carved it in wood.
Marine bleu - Effet de vagues models shapeliness on canvas as well as any sculptor could chisel from marble. From the three primary colors, Lacombe created waves fringed with peacock feathered turbulence, flying up in pink mist, as though pointing toward their source in the clouds. The high horizon may be borrowed from the Japanese prints that Lacombe loved, but it suits Lacombe's intentions. This, like Lacombe's other paintings, is the coast of Finistere as he experienced it. To be sure, the drama was there in Camaret-sur-mer. The colors were Lacombe's invention but the ocean crashing against jagged rocks was an unceasing natural drama.
Lacombe summered in Brittany from 1888-1897 with his friends Emile Bernard and Paul Serusier, classmates from the Academie Julian in Paris. At Camaret he met Charles Cottet, who also became a close friend. Although there were plenty of painters setting up their easels by the shore, Lacombe was interested only in his individual encounter with the forces of nature.
Georges Lacombe (1868-1916) was the child of a prominent family from Versailles who made an advantageous marriage. An extravagantly dressed figure whose wealth spared him from having to sell his works, Lacombe's convictions led him to give his works away. 
When Lacombe turned to human subjects he exercised a designer's hand there, too. His Chestnut Gatherers in Autumn and Breton Boatwomen go about their work in a patterned landscape, reminiscent of Maurice Denis.
Lacombe thought of himself as a sculptor, firstly, but the paintings he made under the Nabi spell deserve admiration for their restless, rhythmical qualities, quite simply their liveliness. His early death at the age of forty-eight has contributed to his relative and undeserved obscurity.
Which brings me to the two little black sheep that charm me. There they are, sole proprietors of vast antique drumlins, enjoying a moment of stillness in an ordinary day. Images:
1. Marine bleu - Effet de vagues, 1893, Museum of Fine Arts, Rennes.
2. The Cliffs At Camaret, 1892, Museum of Fine Arts, Brest.
3 The Yellow Sea, 1893, Museum of Fine Arts, Brest.
4. The Violet Wave, 1895, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
5. Autumn - The Chestnut Gatherers, 1894, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
6. Breton Boatwomen, c. 1892, priavte collection, France.
7. The Black Sheep, 1892, Galerie Levante, Monaco.
8. Existence -Birth, c. 1894-1896, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
4 comments:
I understand that you love so much those two black sheep so still.
Even Lacombe's images that don't include water have wave-like themes. The drumlins seem to be rolling toward the viewer. and in "Birth", the woman's hair is is depicted as a wave. Curious.
I am so enjoying these posts you have made on the Nabi, Jane. I love the simple truth and artists experiences with their world evident within them. beautiful. I didn't know about Lacombe. i love the works.
Painterchum, I don't know of any books in English about Lacombe. However "The Nabis And Their Period" by Charles Chasse is very good. Chasse's book was published in French in 1960 and translated into English in 1969. So you can enjoy the fruits of his youth when Chasse interviewed many of these artists.
Post a Comment