Gobillard – Garden with Iris

Paule Gobillard

(1869 Quimperlé – 1946 Paris)

GARDEN WITH IRIS

Oil on canvas, 33 x 41 cm

Signed lower right: Paule Gobillard

Provenance:

From family ownership

As the niece of Berthe Morisot, who painted at least ten portraits of her, Paule Gobillard grew up in the closest circle of the Impressionists. After the early death of her parents and her aunt, Paule Gobillard lived with her younger sister Jeannie in the house of her cousin Julie Manet, the only daughter of Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet. Older than Julie and Jeannie, she took on responsibility for the two younger girls early on. Stéphane Mallarmé and Auguste Renoir took care of the education of the young ladies and regularly invited them to spend holidays with their families. During these occasions, much painting was done outdoors. In 1900, there was a double wedding: Paule's sister Jeannie married Paul Valéry, and Julie Manet married Ernest Rouart (painter, student of Degas, and son of the famous collector and painter Henri Rouart). Paule moved in with her sister and spent summers at Julie's Château du Mesnil. She remained unmarried and focused entirely on painting.

"I think of the walks we took from Mézy to Le Mesnil when Papa (Eugène Manet) and Maman (Berthe Morisot) planned to acquire it; at that time, it seemed paradise to me to live here," Julie Manet confided in her diary in 1899 (p. 193) and continued, "It is a delightful, very special property (...) very French." Paule Gobillard was often a guest and painted beautiful, impressionistically light-filled landscape paintings in bright pastel tones in the gardens of Mézy and Le Mesnil, which are among her best works. "Garden with Iris" could also be a work by Berthe Morisot and would then cost not five but six figures. Especially in her landscapes, Gobillard comes very close to her aunt and partly also to Auguste Renoir in terms of painting style.

From 1906, she regularly exhibited as a permanent member at the Salon d’Automne, as well as in the galleries Durand Ruel, Petit, Druet, Bernheim Jeune, and internationally in Japan, the USA, and Denmark. Durand-Ruel held a retrospective of her work in his gallery after her death.