VICTOR GABRIEL GILBERT (French, 1847-1933). Le Marché aux Fleurs. Oil on canvas. 18 x 15 inches (45.7 x 38.1 cm). Signed...

Description

VICTOR GABRIEL GILBERT (French, 1847-1933)
Le Marché aux Fleurs
Oil on canvas
18 x 15 inches (45.7 x 38.1 cm)
Signed lower right: Victor Gilbert

PROVENANCE:
Maureen Murphy Fine Arts, Montecito, California (label verso);
Lawrence J. Cantor & Company, Los Angeles, California (label verso);
Lexington Trust, Beverly Hills, California.

The street markets and cafes of Paris are the stuff of Victor Gabriel Gilbert's highly palatable Impressionist-inspired paintings. Despite his lack of art training in his early career, Gilbert exhibited in the 1873 and 1874 Paris Salons, thereby attracting the attention of Pierre Martin, a patron of Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin. It was through Martin's support that Gilbert was able to break away from his profession as a decorator and become a fulltime painter.

Le marché aux Fleurs is an outstanding example of the artist's hallmark paintings, where a fashionable lady's white dress serves as a foil to the array of orange, pink, yellow, and red roses and hydrangeas for her selection. Such vibrant coloration also characterizes the two smaller gouaches, both titled Flower Market, which function almost as pendants, illustrating from different vantage points one of Gilbert's choice compositional formulas: female flower vendors and their various customers artfully positioned among rows of flowers.


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