Carl Conrad Stilling

(Danish, 1874-1938)

Sunny Afternoon, Hyères

Oil on Linen Canvas Laid Down on Fruitwood Panel

13¼ x 20⅛ Inches

Signed Lower Right, "C. Stilling" and Inscribed "Hyères"

Dated Lower Left, "1928"

Titled in Danish, Verso, 'Afternoon Sun on Garden Walls in Hyères, Southern France'

 

An early twentieth-century, Impressionist oil landscape showing a view of a country lane in the old town of Hyères on the French Riviera. The late afternoon sun is reflected brilliantly from a long, stucco garden wall that recedes towards a red-tiled roof as a farmer's horse-drawn cart moves lazily away from the viewer.

 

Carl Conrad Stilling first studied at Copenhagen's Technical School before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1893-1906) where he studied under the Realist, Axel Helsted. In 1899, he also took classes in Italy at the Academia in Florence.

 

For over thirty years, Stilling travelled widely throughout Europe painting lyrical, Impressionist landscapes that he exhibited widely and with success including, regularly, at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition (1902-05, 1909) and the Kunstnerforen (1921, 1924, 1926, 1930) among numerous other locations. His travels and studies took him to Holland, (1899, 1904, 1914); Belgium, (1899); Paris, (1899, 1911, 1921); Brittany, (1924, 1926); Southern France, (1927, 1929); Italy (1899, 1929, 1931, 1933); Switzerland (1909); Germany (1910, 1929) and Corsica (1928), the year that this work was painted.

 

Stilling was particularly drawn to the South of France and Brittany, areas to which he frequently returned to record those qualities of atmospheric light that had attracted so many of his peers. These areas increasingly drew his attention as he continued to practise the principles of Modernism to which he had first been exposed in his early, and formative, visits to Paris. Carl Stilling was fifty-four years old when he painted this serene and jewel-like view of Hyères, the oldest and most southerly resort of the Côte d’Azur.

 

Reference:

Vollmer Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler des 20. Jarhhunderts, Vollmer Supplement, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1992, Vol. 4, p. 363; et al. Weilbach, Dansk Kunstnerleksikon, the Castle and Cultural Agency, Copenhagen; Vollmer Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler des 20. Jarhhunderts, Vollmer Supplement, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1992, Vol. 4, p. 363; Davenport’s Art Reference 2009/10 Edition, LTB Gordonsart, Inc.  2008, p. 2431; et al.