Stanislas Lepine

Rue des Saules, circa 1872
Oil on canvas board
Signed lower right, located on the back
Size: 24 x 34.5cm
Price: €18,000

Stanislas Lépine painted the “Rue des Saules” a little before 1872. A second view of the street, dated between 1872 and 1876 (Artcurial, June 17, 1997), shows the gas lanterns hanging on the wall. The painter depicts the facade of n°22, that of the “Agile Rabbit”, one of the privileged meeting places of Bohemia at the beginning of the 20th century.

The viewer’s attention is drawn to the deserted streets of old Paris and those of the capital at the dawn of the industrial era. He paints with a free and lifted touch, his colorful palette magnifies the nuances of stone and nature.

Stanislas Lépine was a French painter, student of Jean-Baptiste Corot (1796-1875), master of the French naturalist landscape of the 19th century. Corot offers Lépine the brushes and the vision of nature which he applies to that of urban life.

A notorious fact, Lépine took part in the first exhibition of the Impressionists in Paris. He rubbed shoulders with Monet, Sisley, Pissarro and Renoir. If it is not related to the movement from a point of view of plastic research, it joins the attraction of the Impressionists for the Paris of modernity.

Museums:

• Orsay Museum

• Carnavalet Museum

• Department of Graphic Arts of the Louvre Museum.