1904
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Quai au Sable, Chartèves is a 1904 by Léon Augustin Lhermitte, depicting Seine, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet riverbank in France, with a few figures washing laundry and a horse-drawn cart in the distance. Lhermitte drew this from memory in his studio, not outdoors. He used pastel crayons on rough paper, then smudged the powder with brushes and sponges to soften edges. The scene feels lived-in, not staged—like a snapshot of everyday life. If you like this, look up *impasto*—a technique where paint (or pastel) is laid on thickly to create texture.
Like many of Léon-Augustin Lhermitte’s pastels, this drawing shows the Marne River in northeastern France. Such artworks were created both because of the artist’s attraction to the subject and due to their marketability. Drawing from memory, Lhermitte worked in his studio, producing a complex range of marks with pastel crayon on densely textured paper and even manipulating the powdery material with brushes and sponges. Although his comparatively traditional style did not align with artistic movements of his time, it was hugely popular around 1900—especially in the United States, where the…
Lhermitte received a stipend from his hometown Mont-Saint-Père to study in Paris.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Léon Augustin Lhermitte (French pronunciation: ; 31 July 1844 – 28 July 1925) was a French naturalist painter and etcher whose primary subject matter was rural scenes depicting peasants at work.
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