Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Left John Peter Russell Belle-lie late 19th century Watercolour on paper 12.5x17.2cm Purchased 1989 from the estate of Lady Trout with a special allocation from the Queensland Government Queensland Art Gallery John Peter Russell Les Aiguilles, Belle-lie (The Needles, Belle-lle) c.1886-1909 Oil on canvas 39.5 X 63.6cm Gift of Lady Trout 1985 Queensland Art Gallery of Monet, Gustave Geffroy, chose Belle-lle as the site for writing his work on the political figure Louis Auguste Blanqui in the autumn of 1886, when he found himself sharing a residence at Kervilahouen with Monet. He later wrote of his encounter with the island and the artist: I settled at Kervillaouen, in a small house where I found a room, with meals at the inn, a tavern for the pilots. I also found a companion, Claude Monet. I only knew the painter through our correspondence, but we soon became friends and our friendship has lasted. It was with him that I saw the coastline of the wild sea, Le Talus, Port-Goulphar, Port-Coton, all those sea inlets among the enormous rocky cliffs . . 3 Monet visited the island in the autumn of 1886. Russell had been there since June with Marianne, and Monet wrote of their meeting to his friend Madame Hoschédé, saying that he believed himself to be alone in ce coin perdu (this isolated place) but had encountered un peintre américain' who had come up to him and asked if he were Claude Monet 'the prince of the impressionists'? After this introduction Monet warmed to him and allowed Russell to watch him work (a rare privilege), noting in a second letter that he had been on the island for four months and was married to an Italian model.4 Russell returned to Paris at the end of September but Monet, entranced with his surroundings, stayed on until December, painting the fury of the autumn storms on the coast. He concentrated on the landscape of the 'côte sauvage' as his motif, particularly the rocky formations off the Port-Donnant, Port-Coton and Port-Goulphar inlets (which were close to where he was staying), the village of Kervilahouen, and at least one study of the Roche Guibel, now to be found in the Musée Rodin in Paris. Russell spent almost twenty years on the island during which time he remained obsessed with the sea and the 'côte sauvage' as a pictorial motif. Studies of his wife and children and of the local fishing identity Père Polyte provided the only distraction. Amongst his oeuvre the large body of paintings of the rocks, sea and sky dominates. Many motifs such as Les Aiguilles de Port-Coton, Le Rocher du Chien and the Port-Goulphar inlet were painted repeatedly, at different times of the day and in varying weather conditions and seasons. He made at least one other known study of the Roche Guibel, a painting known as Côte en bleu (private collection), an oil study of smaller dimensions and taken from a lower viewpoint looking straight into the inlet without showing any foreground.5 Russell's obsession with this subject was very much of its time. Around the turn of the century, interest in the sea and its surrounds as an artistic motif was reaching new heights. Art nouveau artists and designers delighted in abstracting forms from the natural shapes of seaweed, rocks and marine life forms. Emile Gallé's exquisite glass creations often revealed floating amoebas and jellyfish transformed into decorative forms. In the early years of the twentieth century Claude Debussy's tone poem La Mer was being performed to rapturous audiences in Paris and beyond. Over these years, too, the settled domestic life that Russell had organised for himself on Belle-lle meant he had the time and concentration to experiment and to work through his understanding of the technical demands of pigments and media — a passion that had begun in his student years in Paris. There he had adopted the idea of painting a particular motif repeatedly in varying situations and conditions. In Paris it had been blossom trees and branches, inspired by his love of Japanese prints. On Belle-lle the repeated motif became the rocks of the 'côte sauvage'. Roc Tout (Roche Guibel), the large canvas in the Collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, is thought, on stylistic grounds, to have been painted about 1904-05, towards the end of Russell's stay on the island. The mastery of colour and sureness of touch link it to Cruach en Mahr, Matin Belle-Ile en Mer, one of the rare works exhibited by Russell during his career, at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905.6 Roc Toul is unsigned and was not known to have been exhibited in Russell's lifetime. However, it appears to have been highly thought of by the artist. He brought it with him to Paris when he sold his Belle-lle home to composer Albert Roussel in 1909. Two years later, at the commencement of the peripatetic lifestyle he was to adopt in the years before and after the First World War, he left the large canvas with a friend in Paris, a Monsieur Boisard, inscribing on the verso: 'Dear Mr Boisard. Please keep this oil (of Orpheus) in the meantime while waiting for a 3rd Act? Kind regards John Russell 14/3/ll'.7The references to Orpheus and a '3rd Act' to come may refer to his perception of his own life, or they may refer to incidents in his daughter Jeanne's career as a singer, which was then taking shape. Roc Toul is a painting remarkable for its colour intensity. There is little doubt that colour is the real subject of the work. Russell's use of brilliant cobalts and emerald greens, set off by the softer yellows and touches of rose madder, clothes the harsh rock shapes in an air of almost theatrical mystery. Nothing disturbs the colour harmonies; no other object is introduced into this magical world of iridescent blue rocks and their watery reflections, set against the yellow-green glow of the cliff top from which they are viewed. La Roche Guibel sits in the centre of the inlet, its arched opening providing a further glimpse of shimmering water. Russell's brushwork is loose and confident. He has constructed webs and clouds of colour and has left well behind his earlier obsession with form. Roc Toul is a fine example of Russell's mature colour painting. For him, as for Monet, the subject had become but the excuse for a display of sensuous colour harmony. Dr Ann Galbally is Reader and Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne. L'ALLURE DE LA COTE SAUVAGE 97