Antique French Oil Painting, Attributed to Henri Rolland, in the Manner of Monticelli (note disclaimer in description)

Antique French Oil Painting, Attributed to Henri Rolland, in the Manner of Monticelli (note disclaimer in description) 

A striking antique French oil on wood panel depicting three elegantly dressed women gathered beside a swan in a romantic garden setting. Measuring approximately 21” x 18.25”, the painting is especially beautiful for its extraordinary surface, with thick, expressive impasto and layers of blue, turquoise, cream, ochre and burgundy giving the composition an almost jewel-like quality.

The work is attributed to Henri Paul Rolland, a French painter associated with paintings executed in the distinctive manner of Adolphe Monticelli. Monticelli’s richly colored, heavily worked paintings of elegant figures and romantic garden scenes developed an unmistakable style, and works attributed to Rolland are known that closely follow this tradition.

A faint signature remains along the lower edge, although it is considerably less legible than that of its companion painting.    

The panel is signed Monticelli along the lower edge. It is not by Monticelli. Henri Paul Rolland (1891–1923) spent his brief career painting garden scenes in Monticelli’s manner and signing them with Monticelli’s name, and French salerooms have catalogued his panels on exactly that basis for decades — the signature is a fact of the object’s history, not a claim about its authorship. What remains is a painting of real quality by a painter whose work has outlived the deception it was built on: the impasto is genuinely extraordinary, the composition. We attribute the panel to Rolland. 

The subject is particularly charming: three fashionable women emerge almost dreamlike from the garden, while a beautifully rendered white swan occupies the foreground. Up close, the painting becomes almost abstract, with remarkably thick passages of paint revealing the artist’s brushwork.

Origin: France
Medium: Oil on wood panel
Attribution: Henri Paul Rolland
Dimensions: 21” H x 18.25” W
Condition: Antique condition with age-related wear. The wooden panel has a partial crack visible from the reverse; please see photographs.