NZ & International Fine Art - Day Sale Thursday, 15 February 2024 - 12:00 PM start
Douglas MacDiarmid (1922 - 2020) - Landscape Near Aix-En-Provence
Lot Details
Douglas MacDiarmid (1922 - 2020) Landscape Near Aix-En-Provence watercolour signed & dated '57 (lower left) 32.5 x 49.5cm PROVENANCE Fleischl Collection NOTES Supplied by Anna Cahill, Director, MacDiarmid Arts Trust A delicately coloured autumnal sweep of French countryside in one of Douglas’ favourite painting locations, Provence in southern France. Clearly visible on the right is the Roquefavour Aqueduct, a beautiful 19th-century 3-tier stone viaduct across the Arc River about 10km west of the city of Aix-en-Provence. It is the world’s highest stone aqueduct, built in the Roman style. In the background, to the left, is the distinctive white limestone form of Montagne Sainte Victoire, the mountain Douglas returned to paint many times in increasingly abstract form over his long career, culminating in ‘Love Letter to a Landscape’ in 2010. This is a nod to the famous aspect of the Provençal landscape made familiar to the art world by French impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, who spent much of his life around Aix-en-Provence. A very similar watercolour landscape painted five years later from the same original sketch is reproduced in the 2002 art history book MacDiarmid by Dr Nelly Finet, published for Douglas’ 80th birthday exhibitions in New Zealand and Paris. This version Montagne Sainte-Victoire 1962 (Pl. XVII) was the preparatory sketch of an oil landscape purchased by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for their Paris mansion after their old theatrical friend Noel Coward complained that their art collection was all formal royal portraits, without a landscape in sight!
