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Lot Essay
The artists that populated Montmartre in late 19th Century Paris found inspiration in its modern milieus — the convivial café, the seductive dance hall, the theatrical circus, the bustling street life. Anquetin was a leading figure within the Parisian avant-garde, accompanied by stalwarts of the modern movement such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard, in the café-cabaret circle centered in Montmartre. Anquetin was a true modern artist with an ever-evolving style. One such style, Cloisonnism, established by Anquetin and Bernard in the spring of 1887, was a direct departure from previous forays in Impressionism and Divisionism, with their focus on the brushstroke and heavy applications of paint. The Cloisonnist style was inspired by medieval stained glass enameling techniques and Japanese wood block prints, which were influential in works produced by a number of Parisian artists of the period (Brame et Lorenceau, Anquetin, La passion d'être peintre, Paris, 1991, p. 17).
Executed in 1887, L'Avenue de Clichy, Paris is a vivid example of a work executed in the early Cloisonnist style. The setting is bright and animated, conveying a sense of action and theatricality. The cropped female in the right foreground of the picture as well as the bird's-eye perspective project the viewer into this tightly framed scene. Anquetin's contoured figures are incised in the backdrop, cutting through the color and celebrating the supremacy of the drawn line.
In an essay in the 1 March 1888 issue of La Revue indépendante, critic Édouard Dujardin pointed out 'a rather new and novel manner' that he had detected in the work of his friend Anquetin, who had recently made his debut in exhibitions of the group Les Vingt in Brussels and at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris: 'At first sight, his works proclaim the idea of decorative painting: traced outlines along with strong and fixed colouration. Outline is quasi-abstract sign, gives the character of an object; unity of colour determines the atmosphere, fixes the sensation. From this derives the circumspection of outline and colour as conceived by popular imagery and Japanese art. The artists of the ''image d'Epinal'' and Japanese woodcut albums first trace lines within which are placed colours according to the ''colour pattern'' process. Likewise, the painter Anquetin traces his design with enclosing lines, within which he places his various colour tones juxtaposed in order to produce the desired sensation of general colouration. Drawing predicates colour and colour predicates drawing. And the work of the painter will be something like painting by compartment, analogous to cloisonné works of art, and his technique consists in a sort of cloisonnisme' (quoted in B. Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, exh. cat., Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1981, pp. 23 and 24).
Executed in 1887, L'Avenue de Clichy, Paris is a vivid example of a work executed in the early Cloisonnist style. The setting is bright and animated, conveying a sense of action and theatricality. The cropped female in the right foreground of the picture as well as the bird's-eye perspective project the viewer into this tightly framed scene. Anquetin's contoured figures are incised in the backdrop, cutting through the color and celebrating the supremacy of the drawn line.
In an essay in the 1 March 1888 issue of La Revue indépendante, critic Édouard Dujardin pointed out 'a rather new and novel manner' that he had detected in the work of his friend Anquetin, who had recently made his debut in exhibitions of the group Les Vingt in Brussels and at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris: 'At first sight, his works proclaim the idea of decorative painting: traced outlines along with strong and fixed colouration. Outline is quasi-abstract sign, gives the character of an object; unity of colour determines the atmosphere, fixes the sensation. From this derives the circumspection of outline and colour as conceived by popular imagery and Japanese art. The artists of the ''image d'Epinal'' and Japanese woodcut albums first trace lines within which are placed colours according to the ''colour pattern'' process. Likewise, the painter Anquetin traces his design with enclosing lines, within which he places his various colour tones juxtaposed in order to produce the desired sensation of general colouration. Drawing predicates colour and colour predicates drawing. And the work of the painter will be something like painting by compartment, analogous to cloisonné works of art, and his technique consists in a sort of cloisonnisme' (quoted in B. Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, exh. cat., Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1981, pp. 23 and 24).