Theodore Earl Butler

(American, 1861–1936)

Port du Tréport, Normandy, c. 1906

oil on canvas

signed T.E. Butler (lower right)

25 3/4 x 31 1/2 inches.

Property from a Florida Collection

This lot is located in Chicago.

This painting will be included in Patrick Bertrand's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the work of Theodore Earl Butler. We are grateful for his assistance cataloging this lot and for identifying the correct location.

Provenance:

Estate of the Artist

James P. Butler, the Artist's son

Spanierman Gallery, New York

Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco, California (label verso, titled as Honfleur)

R.H. Love Galleries, Chicago (titled as Honfleur and dated 1907)

Purchased from the above by the present owner, July 13, 1994

Literature:

Sally Gross, The Life and Art of Theodore Earl Butler, unpublished M.A. thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1982 (titled as Honfleur)

Richard H. Love, Emergence from Monet's Shadow, Chicago, 1985, p. 287, illus. 26-3 (titled as Honfleur)

Lot note:

Formerly identified as a depiction of Honfleur, the present painting in fact shows the Normandy town of Tréport, with the distinctive tower of the Saint-Jacques church in the foreground. Port du Tréport, Normandy, c. 1906, is a bird’s eye view of the entrance to the port and its pier stretching out into the English Channel. Theodore Earl Butler first visited the coast of Normandy in the summer of 1904, when he traveled with fellow artist Philip Leslie Hale and his family to Quiberville, a small resort village along the northern French coast. Butler continued to make annual summer visits to the area with his family to paint scenes of the seashore and its environs.

Prior to 1900, the majority of Butler’s landscapes depict the region surrounding Giverny. An American artist hailing from Columbus, Ohio, he first journeyed in 1888 to Giverny to join the American Impressionist community that had settled in the village to be within Claude Monet’s orbit. While there, Butler eventually met and married in 1892 Suzanne Hoschedé, Monet’s stepdaughter. While in Giverny, the artist also met Blanche Hoschedé, Suzanne’s sister, who painted Jardin en fleurs (Les rosiers) (Lot 15), also included in the present sale and which comes from the same collection. Suzanne unfortunately died of a lingering illness in 1899, leaving behind Theodore and their two children, James and Lili. After a brief visit to America, the artist returned to France with his children and began to look beyond the rolling fields and bucolic gardens of Giverny for new inspiration. During the summer of 1906 alone, Butler visited multiple locations along the Normandy coast, including Dieppe, Veules-les-Roses, Trépied, Honfleur, as well as Tréport, the location of the present canvas.

In many of the artworks that he produced along the Normandy coast, Butler took advantage of the effects of sunlight and atmosphere and used color as he saw fit to better express himself dynamically. Port du Tréport is one such example. Here, the artist has filled the foreground of his composition with shoreline buildings along the port and diffused their masses with bright, high-key tones. The use of energetic, yet elegantly discrete brushwork, causes the pictorial elements and surrounding space to seemingly dissolve into each other. With its energy-charged brushwork, vivid and highly saturated color, and boldly executed composition, Port du Tréport stands as an exemplary illustration of Butler’s best post-impressionist work.

Port du Tréport, Normandy, c. 1906