Oil on mahogany panel
Signed lower right
Titled on the back on an old label “The pleasures of summer”
Dimensions: 41 32 cm x
With frame: 55 x 47

Price: EUR 5500

On the banks of the Adour, an impressionist work, with a lively, strong and luminous touch. Three elegant women come to relax at the water's edge. We can recognize the city of Bayonne in the distance.

The banks of the Adour, Bayonne, Basque Country.

Gustave Colin was seduced by the Basque country. He painted many canvases there

When Gustave Colin settled in the Basque Country around 1860, he was already considered a "modern" figure alongside his master, Camille Corot, who came to set up his easel in Ciboure in 1871. Many Impressionists subsequently travelled the Basque Country to paint and draw it.

In our painting, we can see in the distance the city of Bayonne, the Sainte Marie cathedral, the Saint André church and the Saint Esprit bridge which spans the Adour.

An impressionist painting with a loose, brushed paste.

Three elegant women stroll along the banks of the Adour near Bayonne, a typical impressionist subject titled by the painter "the pleasures of summer"
The work, certainly painted on the motif, is brushed with a quick and energetic touch.

The viewer's eye is drawn to the play of splashes of color on the colorful outfits of the women in the foreground, then gets lost in the distance towards the Pont de Saint Esprit which catches the light.

The work is luminous, treated with broad brush strokes and an astonishing sense of sunshine.

Bibliography

From Paris to the Basque beaches

On the urgent advice of his father, a judge by profession, Gustave Colin went to study law at the Paris Law School in 1850; but he abandoned them in 1853 to devote himself definitively to painting. From then on, he would frequent the studios of Ary Scheffer and Thomas Couture, as well as the cafés where the future masters of French painting met. After a few exhibitions in Arras, he was admitted to the Paris Salon in 1857. A professor of painting at the Académie Julian, his reputation would definitively be established with his presence at the Salon des Refusés.
Passionate about travel, Gustave Colin was seduced by the Basque Country and Ciboure (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) in particular, a fishing village rooted in local culture and maritime tradition that saw a large number of painters flock there. It was there that he married Marie Carmier Couspeire in 1860; he settled there before moving, in 1862, to Saint-Jean-de-Luz where he would paint many rural scenes.

The Rejected's Lounge 

In 1863, the jury of the Salon refused many works by young painters. Faced with the many protests, Emperor Napoleon III decreed the holding of a "Salon of Refusals" which brought together the works that could not be presented at the official Salon: the painting presented by Gustave Colin, Spanish Basques playing pelota under the walls of Fontarabie, today at the Basque Museum in Bayonne, was a huge success. The remarkable work of its compositions and its colors was praised by the critics, sensitive to the pictorial developments and the open-air scenes and daily life, very far from traditional religious or mythological motifs.

The first impressionist exhibition 

Rubbing shoulders in Paris with the future masters of Impressionist painting, Gustave Colin was invited by them to participate in 1874 in the first Impressionist exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery, where he presented five paintings.
Particularly appreciated by Count Doria who would become his patron, by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, by the Rouart family and by many others, he exhibited regularly in Paris (from 1890 at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars, organized by the Société nationale des beaux-arts) and obtained a medal of honor at the Salon of 1880, as well as a silver medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1889; he was made a knight of the Legion of Honor in 1899 and an officer in 1907.
Gustave Colin died on December 28, 1910, and is buried in the Belvédère cemetery in Ciboure, where a street bears his name. The artist left behind a large body of work: his portraits, his landscapes bathed in light, his genre and bullfighting scenes can be counted in the dozens either in museums or in private collections. The Arras museum has about thirty of them, such as the Self-portrait of 1858, the one in Lille, Le Castillo and the Pasagès strait. High tide, the Orsay museum in Paris, The artist's wife, not to mention the many works preserved in Pau or Bayonne.

Bibliography  

• Hans Peter Bühler, “Colin Gustave”, Allgemeines Kunsterlexikon, 1998

• Gérard Schurr, Pierre Cabane, Dictionary of the minor masters of painting, 1820-1920, vol. II, Paris, Les Editions de l'amateur, 1996

• Sophie Monterez, “Impressionism and its era” International Dictionary-Delanoël-Filipacchi

•1920, vol. II, Paris, Les Editions de l'amateur, 1996

Museums  

• Paris, Orsay Museum

• Arras, Museum of Fine Arts:

• Bayonne, Basque museum and the history of Bayonne:

• Bosmie-l'Aiguille, castle:

• Compiègne, Antoine-Vivenel museum:

• Douai, Chartreuse museum:

• Lille, Palace of Fine Arts:

• Marseille, Museum of Fine Arts:

• Paris, Orsay Museum:

• Pau, Museum of Fine Arts:

• Le Puy-en-Velay, Crozatier museum:

• Reims, Museum of Fine Arts:

• Vitré, castle museum

Source

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave-Henri_Colin#Hommage

https://www.archivespasdecalais.fr/Recherche-par-commune/Lettre-A/
Arras/Anniversaries-and-events/Birth-in-Arras-of-the-artist-Gustave-Colin