Garden in Provence (Le Jardin Provençal)

Among the latest works in this batch, this 1920 garden painting in Provence reflects the final phase of Guillaumin's long career — he would paint until shortly before his death in 1927 at the age of eighty-six. The Provençal garden gave him the full range of Mediterranean flora and light: exuberant colour, strong shadows, the geometric organisation of a cultivated space against the wilder landscape beyond. The Minneapolis Institute of Art holds the canvas in its French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings. By 1920 Guillaumin was painting in a world transformed by the First World War, with Fauvism and early Cubism already well established, and his own bold colour now looked less startling than it had in 1873 or 1895. The garden subject was characteristic of his late period — domestic, Mediterranean, full of the warm colour that southern France continued to provide after decades of visits.

Oil on canvas with the broad, confident handling of a very late Guillaumin — strokes large and decisive, colour fully saturated, the garden's varied elements resolved into zones of warm and cool without laborious detail. The Provençal light is the real subject, transforming every surface into a colour event. The garden's structure is implied through the organisation of greens, ochres, and floral colour patches rather than explicitly described.