Lot 314: Richard Clague (French/New Orleans, 1821-1873),

Richard Clague (French/New Orleans, 1821-1873), "Idyllic Landscape with a Maiden and Young Man along a Path", oil on canvas, unsigned, 18 in. x 22 in., in a gilt frame.
PLEASE NOTE: Provenance: Estate of the artist; to his cousin Augustus de Brueys Hughes. The pendant painting was sold in these rooms, April 14, 2007, lot 447. Note: This is an important recent discovery of a landscape by the "father of Louisiana landscape painting," Richard Clague. For 130 years, New Orleans collectors have been searching for paintings that were found in Clague's studio in New Orleans at the time of his death in 1873. The contents of that studio were acquired by the artist's cousin, Augustus de Brueys Hughes of the New Orleans law firm of Billings and Hughes, and transported to New York, as reported in New Orleans' newspapers at the time. Mr. de Brueys Hughes was a member of Clague's extended family. Clague's mother, Marie Justine Delphine de la Roche, had a sister, Josephine, who married François Desiré de Brueys. Their daughter married a cousin, Augustus de Brueys Hughes, whose legal career took him to New York. When the artist died, de Brueys Hughes acquired the contents of Clague's studio and transported everything to New York in 1873, not to have been seen since, or at least not to have been recognized as the work of Richard Clague. In 2006, a New York fine arts dealer made a fortuitous discovery of what was a lower Gulf South landscape painting in upstate New York. His research connected the de Brueys family of New Orleans and the de Brueys Hughes family of New York with the Louisiana background of the painting he had found, and voila, more than one of the long lost paintings of Richard Clague was rediscovered. That painting, "Life on the Farm: St. Tammany Parish," was sold in these salesrooms on April 14, 2007, lot 447. Now, the original source of the estate discovery has offered to Neal Auction Company the other painting from the Clague cache to sell. Clague was educated in France and Switzerland from the age of fifteen. He studied with Francois-Edouard Picot and at the ateliers of Horace Vernet and Ernest Hebert. His debt, however, is to Theodore Rousseau and the Barbizon and Fontainebleau groups with whom he painted naturalistic landscapes in the plein aire style. Clague used the traditions and discoveries of the French Barbizon artists upon his return to New Orleans, applying them to the landscape of Louisiana forests and swamps and of Mississippi and Alabama, and in teaching other Southern landscape painters, especially Marshall Smith, Jr. and William Buck. His landscape compositions, both of European and Gulf South subjects, usually have a "central view" and feature a road in the foreground or water, wedging toward a horizontal screen of trees in the central mass, often with a vernacular building or rural figures, both people or livestock, with wagons, below an expanse of sky. The landscape offered here perfectly exemplifies these precepts of Clague. The painting presented here has a curved road in the foreground juxtaposed against a reverse curved dead tree trunk. The handling of light as seen in the light line of water crossing the picture plane horizontally in the center of the canvas ties the landscape to the sky above. The tree trunks on each side of the water, hill and clouds deepen the perspective, with the water and the darker blue hill visible between the trunks. Such compositions reveal Clague's European training. The woman dressed in a low cut blouse with full long sleeves seems to be addressing the young man handling the milk cows. A more muted set of figures in the lower left also inhabit the landscape. Roulhac Toledano, author of Richard Clague, 1821-1873, 1974. Neal Auction Company would like to thank Ms. Toledano for her invaluable assistance with the catalogue entry.