Hippolyte BOULENGER (1837–1874)
« Cascade de l’Ardoisière à Vichy »
1867
Oil on canvas, laid down on panel.
Stamped with the studio sale stamp l.r.
41,5 × 58 cm (panel) | 69 x 86 cm (framed)
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PROVENANCE
Studio of the artist, by his death in 1874 ;
Studio sale : Vente de tableaux, esquisses, fusains & dessins de feu Hippolyte Boulenger, Salle Janssens, Brussels, 1881, nr. 91, as : ‘Ruisseau des ardoisières à Vichy. Étude.’
Where bought by Mr. Ch. Vander Borght, Brussels ;
By descent to Mme E. Vander Borght, Brussels ;
Anonymous sale, Guillaume Campo, Antwerp, s.d. ;
With the Brussels art market ca. 2000 ;
Ancienne collection Richard Karayan, Brussels ;
His sale, HdV Vanderkindere, Bxl, 21/10/25, lot 115.
EXHIBITED
Exposition rétrospective « L’École de Tervueren », Tervuren, Ancien Musée Colonial, 1924, cat. nr. 34, as : ‘La Cascade. Collection Ch. Vander Borght.’
Tentoonstelling “Boulenger en zijn vrienden”, vzw De Vrienden van de School van Tervuren, 1996, cat. nr. 14, as: ‘Steengroeve met stortbeek te Vichy’.
LITERATURE
H. De Vilder & M. Wynants, L’école de Tervueren, traduit du néerlandais par P. Tasiaux, Tervueren : Edition « Les amis de l’école de Tervueren », 2000, ill. p. 127, as : ‘Torrent à Vichy’.
H. De Vilder, De School van Tervuren : in de bedding van de tijd, Tervuren : VZW De Vrienden van de School van Tervuren, 2008, ill. p. 146, as ‘Stenige stortbeek te Vichy’.
€ 22.000,-
PRICE
HIPPOLYTE BOULENGER — Cascade de l’Ardoisière à Vichy, 1867
There is a certain irony in the fact that Hippolyte Boulenger's journey to Vichy in 1867 was not undertaken in search of landscape at all. Barely thirty years old, the artist's health had already begun to fail. Following a period of illness and nervous crises earlier that year, he travelled to the French spa town in search of treatment. He nevertheless took his painting materials with him. The resulting Cascade de l’Ardoisière à Vichy remained in his studio and appeared at his posthumous sale in Brussels in July 1881 as Ruisseau des ardoisières à Vichy. Étude. That final word provides the key to the painting’s remarkable modernity. Traditionally subordinate to the finished work, the étude offered Boulenger the freedom to preserve the immediacy of an encounter with nature: rock, vegetation and running water are translated into vigorous strokes until the image, at close range, continually threatens to dissolve into paint. What might once have been understood as incompleteness becomes pictorial intensity. Acquired at the studio sale by the influential Brussels collector Charles Vander Borght, the painting returned to public view as an autonomous work in the landmark retrospective L’École de Tervueren in 1924. Its history thus mirrors one of the fundamental transformations explored in In Their Nature: the direct study from nature gradually acquired an artistic existence independent of any more finished composition. The study was no longer merely a means towards a painting; it had become the painting.