5. Felix Francois Georges Philibert Ziem (French, 1821-1911)

Venetian Scene.
Oil on wood panel, monogrammed lower right, framed.
4-1/2" x 7-1/4".

PROVENANCE: Christie's sale, 1990 (sticker verso Ref.# FD 480).

4,000/6,000     SOLD: $4,830.00

Ziem was an extraordinarily versatile and prolific painter who produced history and genre scenes, portraits and landscapes, architectural views, marine subjects and seascapes as well as still lifes and works in watercolor. His expressionistic brushwork and interest in capturing atmospheric effects and a precise time of day have led historians to label Ziem a Post Impressionist. He is also often classified as an Orientalist owing to his many depictions of Greece, Egypt, Turkey and Algiers.

Ziem was born in Beaune on the Cote-d'Or to a Croatian father and Burgundian mother. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon with a student of Jacques-Louis David and after completing his education, traveled to Nice where he enjoyed the patronage of the bourgeoisie. A trip to Italy in 1842 was a life-changing event for Ziem who after visiting Rome discovered Venice--a city which became for him a second home. For the remainder of his life, Ziem returned to Venice to paint it again and again, eventually purchasing a home there.

The present work on panel is a fine example of Ziem's most intimate sketches of Venice. Painted with a directness that suggests it was done on the spot without any preliminary sketches, this little oil captures the effects of late afternoon light on the Venetian waterfront, with a gondolier in the foreground, and the majestic San Marco in the distance.

The French art critic Theophile Gautier offered a pretty description of Ziem's particular talent, which can aptly apply to the present work: "Each artist has a spiritual home often far away from his native land...for Ziem this place was Venice. It is there that the painter established his legal residence. With a taste for water which dissolves into fragments of color, he constructs with just a few strokes a house in the red twilight. But that which he expresses best of all is the green water of the lagoon, broken into a thousand glints of light and reflecting the whim of the sky in crossing the wakes and the backwash created by the gondolas which disturb the reflected silhouettes of the palaces."

Condition: Recently cleaned and varnished; small dot of inpainting in sky to ease area where glaze had been slightly abraded. Otherwise the painting, which was done in very delicate thin glazes is very close to its original condition.