Lot 1822
WYNFORD DEWHURST (1864-1941)
A BEND IN THE RIVER AT LES ANDELYS
Signed, oil on canvas (stamped L. Besnard)
36.5 x 53.5cm.
Provenance: France, Private Collection
Wynford Dewhurst was born in Manchester. Like many promising young artists in the late nineteenth century, he went to Paris for an art training in the classical tradition at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was in Paris that he came into contact with Impressionism. He wrote later 'my conversion into an enthusiastic impressionist was short, in fact it was immediate.'
The greater part of Dewhurst's work was produced in France, initially in the Seine valley (close to his mentor Monet) but later in the Creuse valley in central France where he rented a house for six months each year from 1904-1914. His 1904 book, dedicated to Claude Monet, Impressionist Painting: Its Genesis and Development, was the first important assessment of the movement to be published in English. Such was his devotion to the Impressionist cause that in 1910 the Daily News, in a review of an exhibition of his work, dubbed him 'England's Claude Monet'.
Dewhurst and his family rented a house at Les Andelys on the Seine in 1903. The small town of Les Andelys is situated about 16 miles downstream from Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, on a spectacular loop of the river Seine overlooked by towering chalk cliffs. Here, while finishing his book on Impressionism, he painted a number of important works.
We are grateful to Roger Brown, who wrote the book Wynford Dewhurst: Manchester's Monet to accompany the 2017 exhibition of Dewhurst's work at Manchester City Art Gallery, for his help in cataloguing this lot.
