Beschreibung:

PHILIP WILSON STEER (BRITISH 1860-1942) THE CASINO, BOULOGNE-SUR-MER Oil on canvas Signed and dated 92 (lower right) 51 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) Provenance: Private Collection, Thomas Humphry Ward Esq.(1845-1926), Art critic for the Times Newspaper Private Collection, Mrs. Sandwith Private Collection, Adrian McConnel Thence by descent Exhibited: London, The Goupil Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings by P. Wilson Steer, February 1894, no. 1, as 'property of T Humphrey Ward Esq.' Literature: 'Our London Correspondence', Glasgow Herald, 26 February 1894, p. 7 'From Private Correspondence', The Scotsman, 26 February 1894, p. 7 'From our London Correspondent', Manchester Courier, 26 February 1894, p. 5 'Exhibitions', Pall Mall Gazette, 27 February 1894, p. 3 'Exhibition Review, A Modern Painter', The National Observer, 3 March 1894, p. 396 G[eorge] M[oore], 'Mr Steer's Exhibition', The Speaker, 3 March 1894, p. 250 'Art: The Goupil Gallery', Weekly Dispatch, 4 March 1894, p. 6 'Studio and Gallery', Black and White, 10 March 1894, p. 294 'Fine Art: The Goupil', The Morning Post, 10 March 1894, p. 2 George Moore Modern Painting, 1898 (Walter Scott , p. 242 DS MacColl, Life, Work and Setting of Philip Wilson Steer 1945 (Faber & Faber), pp. 51, 193 Bruce Laughton Philip Wilson Steer 1971 (Clarendon Press, Oxford), p.130, (no 52) Sketches for the present work are included in Steer's sketchbook inscribed Boulogne and dated 1888. The sketchbook is held in the V&A archives under reference E 281 - 1943. Had you been standing on the upper deck of the Folkestone steamer, steering into the harbour at Boulogne-sur-Mer at the turn of the twentieth century, your view on the port side, beyond the guard rail of the jetée de l'est, would take in the plage, and the Second Empire Casino. Sitting in public gardens that contained a saltwater bathing establishment, the lines of the casino prepared you for those of the great exhibition 'palaces' of Paris, a train ride away. A quick scan of your Baedeker would tell you that the casino opened every year for the summer season from 15 June to 15 October and a day ticket would cost you two francs. Since the lights are on in Philip Wilson Steer's view of the building, we can assume that the present canvas must represent a late summer evening. Although dated '92' we know that the painter spent the summer at Cowes in that year. He would have passed through Boulogne in 1887, 1888 and 1889, producing swift sketchbook notes, three of which relate directly to the present work (fig 1). Why, in the 1880s was Boulogne and its environs so admired, and why did it supplant Walberswick in Steer's affections? The answers are various - Dannes, Étaples, Montreuil and one or two other picturesque towns nearby were supporting small colonies of British and American painters, many of whom were working in loosely Impressionist styles, while further down the coast there were the familiar haunts of Monet and Boudin. Boulogne was also one of the main points of access to Paris in the late nineteenth century, its packet-boat service having commenced in 1849. In Steer's case the specific interest in Boulogne is likely to have come first from the early work of Manet that he saw in the artist's posthumous retrospective exhibition in Paris in 1884. 'When the Manet exhibition was held', he told John Rothenstein, 'I had never heard his name. But I went and was very much interested ...The landscapes I liked very much ...' Manet had of course visited Boulogne several times in the 1860s and on one occasion on the plage, had painted the twin piers that form the harbour entrance. Fashionable promenades, these breakwaters with their white handrails had not changed when Steer painted them twenty years later. Passing through the port in the late 1880s, and again in 1891, Steer must have realized that he needed to go no further for one of the most celebrated British Impressionist paintings, Boulogne Sands. Having already painted this beach, looking north