A Brush With Nature: The Gere Collection of Landscape Oil Sketches

by Christopher Riopelle, Xavier Bray

More than forty years ago, John and Charlotte Gere, both distinguished art historians, pioneered the collecting of small-scale landscape oil sketches created by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists working out of doors in nature. Such paintings, created quickly to capture subtle atmospheric effects and the fleeting play of light, played a vital role in the visual training of generations of European artists. The pictures were not conceived of as finished works of art, were rarely if ever exhibited during the artists’ lifetimes, and were often kept in the studio for later consultation.
This beautiful book presents the Gere collection, which today numbers some 70 works. These include paintings by Valenciennes, Frederic, Lord Leighton, and Thomas Jones, as well as by less well-known artists such as Gilles Closson and Simon Denis. While the majority were painted in Italy, there are also works by British, French, Italian, German, Belgian, and Scandinavian artists. These intimate and compelling documents of artists at work form what is perhaps the most comprehensive private collection of its kind.
Christopher Riopelle is curator of nineteenth-century painting at the National Gallery, London. Xavier Bray is assistant curator at the National Gallery.



Published by the National Gallery Company and distributed by Yale University Press

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Arvind Balasundaram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable private collection of mostly landscape oil paintings, assembled over a period of forty years by John and Charlotte Gere. It contains works by well known artists like Corot, Rosa, and Valenciennes, but also contains some gems from lesser known artists and their ateliers. Most of these works demonstrate spontaneous and immediacy of execution, elements that Valenciennes first identified as necessary for a true work of landscape. Several canvases capture the essence of Italy in its all-encompassing beauty, especially the breathtaking play of light and water against a backdrop of Roman ruins. Others capture solemn views of coastal scenes in Wales or the English and French countryside, and are haunting in spite of their simplicity of color and line. The sparseness of the foreground in these works brilliantly contextualizes the fleeting and shimmering details of the horizon, as the clouds and sky are captured in a moment in time.

Most importantly, this is a reflection of a collector’s passion, particularly in the discipline to acquire works that are thematically integrated in how the landscape is executed. These pieces were acquired in spite of disputed attributions, a testament to the joy each canvas provided to the Geres in their living room, where they were once prominently displayed.