La Rivière, Environs de Santiponce

Signed 'E Sanchez Perrier' (underlined) bottom right; also titled verso, oil on panel

15 x 18 in. (38.1 x 45.7cm)

PROVENANCE:

Private Collection, New Jersey.

By descent in the family.

Private Collection, New Jersey.

NOTE:=

Emilio Sanchez-Perrier was a young Spanish prodigy, joining the Academia de Bellas Artes of Sevilla at only 13 while still working as a watchmaker with his father. In 1877, the artist travelled extensively in Spain before eventually settling in Paris, where he worked in the studios of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Félix Ziem. First affiliated with the Barbizon School of painters, Sanchez explored the Fontainebleau forest at length alongside Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny in search of new subject matters. Quickly, his landscapes grew in popularity and were exhibited with much acclaim across Europe, including at the Royal Academy in London as well as at the Paris Salon. Eventually, the artist caught the attention of George A. Lucas, a wealthy American art collector who became his most notable patron, owning a large number of his works.

Sanchez-Perrier was celebrated for his realistic, yet somehow poetic landscapes that shared much of photography's painstaking detail and precision. He liked to work in oil as well as watercolor, which enabled him to combine a realistic aesthetic with a free touch (associated with the plein air practice). As exemplified in the present work, which Sanchez-Perrier executed in Santiponce, a rural community in the outskirts of Seville, his landscapes always focused on the interaction between the sky and the water.