Roger JOURDAIN
A boat trip on the Seine, 1889
Oil on canvas
Signed and dedicated
On the back: signed, titled “Le soir”, numbered n°2 and dated 1889
Dimensions: 92 x 65.5 cm
With frame: 121.5 x 94 cm
Provenance
We would like to thank Mr. Olivier Tyrel de Poix, one of the heirs of the sculptor Pierre Tourgueneff, for all the information he provided on the iconography and origin of our painting:
“The painting “le Soir” by R. Jourdain was part of Roger Jourdain’s Rueil Malmaison exhibition in 2016 . The front woman in the boat is Henriette Jourdain, the artist’s wife. This painting belonged to the sculptor Pierre Tourgueneff from 1889. It remained in its Vert Bois estate in Rueil Malmaison through 4 estates before being sold in 2021.
The sculptor Pierre Tourgueneff was a close friend and neighbor of Roger Jourdain, as well as of his wife Henriette, who served as a model for some of his bronze works.“.
Price upon request
This painting by Roger Jourdain plunges us into “La Belle Époque”; it testifies to the sweetness of life spent on Sundays along the Seine. The painter captures the atmosphere of this place where many Parisians came to relax. The two elegant in a boat stopped at the edge of the river, in the shade and out of sight for an intimate discussion. In the distance, we see another boat on which a man with a boater and a woman protected from the rays of the sun by an umbrella are walking along the water. The impressionist touch is put to the service of the vibrations of the aqueous reflections. The mahogany color of the boat’s wood echoes the reddish hair of the elegant woman from the back. The black of her outfit warms up and contrasts the gradient of blue and green of the landscape.
The banks of the Seine and the Marne inspired the greatest impressionist painters of the time, including Renoir, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Caillebotte, and others.
Biography :
Roger Jourdain enters the School of Fine Arts in Paris where he is a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel. He began his career at the Salon of 1869.
From then on, he regularly exhibited landscapes and seascapes in Normandy
Normandy, on the banks of the Seine or even the Thames at Cookham.
He also painted genre scenes.
Around 1876, he had a mansion built near Parc Monceau. He resold it in 1878 to the painter Guillaume Dubufe. The hotel becomes the Jean-Jacques Henner National Museum.
For the record, the wife of Roger Jourdain, Henriette Marie Dubois de Moulignon, is one of the models of the painters John Singer Sargent, Giovanni Boldini and Albert Besnard. The painter is also a politician , he exercises as mayor of Rueil-Malmaison from 1900 to 1906.
Museums:
• In Paris: Orsay Museum
• In France: Louviers Fine Arts Museum (thirteen paintings and fourteen landscape studies)
