Marine Mer, bleue et falaise

One of a sequence of marine subjects painted by Conder during his stay at Ste-Marguerite west of Dieppe on the Normandy coast during the summer of 1893:

‘Art student Alfred Thornton, who organised the Ste-Marguerite ‘camp’, was a close observer of the bohemian Conder, who had just had some popular and critical success at the exhibition of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (The New Salon). Thornton recalled that ‘his dreamy manner and delightful talk suggested a man living in a world of amber-coloured visions: this showed itself in his work at first, but, later became modified at Ste-Marguerite by the addition of exquisite pale greens and misty blues … Conder’s method at this time was often to make small sketches from nature and expand them into larger pictures, as that helped him obtain breadth; also he found his designs better expressed by square rather than long canvases.’

‘Thornton’s observations are borne out by the evidence of the present work, with its gold curtain cliff face softened by the blue haze of sea and sky, and with its less than fully horizontal (less than nine by five) proportions. Simultaneously pallid and splendid, Marine mer, bleu et falaise is more Symbolism than Impressionism, more dreamed than observed, both in its softly nacreous palette and in the figure of the sea-nymph disporting on the strand. The ethereal quality of this painting, its deliquescent tenderness was to become Conder’s trademark, both in his work and in his personal presence, and calls to mind Oscar Wilde’s description of his conversation as ‘like a beautiful sea-mist’.

‘At the New Salon of 1894 Conder exhibited a sequence of three seascapes with the shared title Marine mer; Marine mer, grise et nuages; Marine mer, verte et ombre; and Marine mer, bleu et falaise. It is here suggested that the present work may in fact be this last.’ (extracts from Dr David Hansen’s catalogue entry, with the assistance of Dr Ann Galbally, Sotheby’s Australia, Sydney, 31 August 2010, lot 41, cat. p.88).