In a gently undulating landscape, a woman sits on a stone bench, with her head slightly tilted as she dries her tear-stained eyes. The green-brown cloak wrapped around her, which appears to be made of velvet, blurs the boundary between the landscape and the woman. On a lower path, a horseman is taking his leave. The horse gathers speed and almost disappears from view on the left, while the rider waves to the woman with his white handkerchief. The title The Parting describes the scene, yet leaves open whether the painting depicts a legendary, literary or everyday subject. Its enigmatic character makes it difficult to place within the oeuvre of the versatile artist Albert Besnard (1849–1934).
The painting is executed in a fluid, loose manner, using a limited palette of various shades of green and brown, and a reddish-orange for the woman’s hair. The paint has been applied thinly throughout; in some areas, such as the path, the ground layer shows through. The dreamlike scene – with the woman’s clothing and red hair lending it a Victorian air – was most likely intended as a sketch, or possibly a preliminary study for a later, unknown painting.
Life and career
Besnard was born into an artistic family in Paris. From an early age, he knew he wanted to become a painter and began his training with the history painter Jean-François Brémond (1807–1868). He later studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) and Sébastien Cornu (1804–1870), both neoclassical history painters.
In 1870, Besnard participated in the Paris Salon for the first time, and in 1874 was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome, which gave him the opportunity to spend three years at the Villa Medici in the Italian capital. There he met his future wife, the sculptor Charlotte Gabrielle Dubray (1854–1931). Due to his mother’s ill health, Besnard returned to France with Dubray at the end of 1878, and the young couple married shortly afterwards. When Charlotte Besnard-Dubray received commissions for portrait busts in London, the couple moved there in 1880. In London, Besnard came into contact with artists such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912), John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) and Pre-Raphaelites such as Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898). He also spent much time with Alphonse Legros (1837–1911), with whom he experimented with graphic techniques.
Albert Besnard, Madame Roger Jourdain, 1886, oil on canvas, 199 × 150.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, gift of Mme Roger Jourdain, 1921. Photo: © GrandPalaisRmn (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
In 1883, the couple returned to Paris, where Besnard received a major commission to decorate the Ecole de Pharmacie. He was prolific, and regularly exhibited in galleries and at the Salon. In 1886, he created one of his masterpieces, a portrait of Mme Roger Jourdain (). The painting was both praised and reviled for its composition, its rendering of (artificial) light and shadow, and its bold use of colour. During this period, Besnard became increasingly sought after in Parisian society as a portrait painter, while also receiving numerous commissions for public buildings.
By the early decades of the twentieth century he had become an important and successful artist who held influential positions in the art world. Yet his oeuvre has always been difficult to place within the prevailing movements. Writing in 1892, the art critic Paul Gsell (1870–1947) counted him among the Impressionists for his attention to light effects and reflections and the way his figures related to their surroundings, often creating an atmospheric unity in his work. Besnard, however, did not move in Impressionist circles nor did he exhibit alongside them. His use of colour may have been experimental, but his style remained much more academic: as he himself stressed, line was always more important to him than colour. According to his biographer Camille Mauclair (1872–1945), what distinguished him from the Impressionists was the greater deliberation and intellectual substance of his work. Together with his sustained focus on the depiction of light, these are the most characteristic features of his paintings.
Contact with Theo van Gogh
In correspondence between the brothers Vincent (1853–1890) and Theo van Gogh (1857–1891) in May 1885, Besnard is mentioned in connection with his submission to that year’s Salon (). Vincent found the colour combinations Theo observed there – such as orange set against blue – intriguing. Through his letters, Theo tried to convince Vincent, who was still in Holland at the time, that the palette of modern art in Paris was far lighter than that of the works Vincent was seeing and creating at home. Not long after, the art dealer Theo began handling works by Besnard at Boussod, Valadon & Cie, although relatively few were sold. One such work was the pastel Woman Warming Herself (Femme nue se chauffant) (). After its sale, Besnard wrote to Theo asking him to act as intermediary and request the buyer to lend it to a pastel exhibition.
Boussod, Valadon & Cie also supported Besnard’s still nascent career through publishing: in 1888, the firm’s illustrated magazine, issued in both French and English, featured the first biography and a fulsome tribute to ‘Albert Besnard and his work’, written by Frantz Joudain, an architect and childhood friend of the artist.
A professional – and possibly friendly – relationship thus developed between Theo and Besnard. The latter could be inferred from another preserved (undated) letter from Besnard to Theo, cited by Vincent in July 1888. In it, Besnard urgently requested 200 francs, offering Theo the choice of a watercolour in return. It is plausible that this transaction went ahead, but that, instead of a watercolour for those 200 francs, Theo chose The Parting. There is no other painting or watercolour by Besnard in Theo’s collection. This came at a pivotal moment in Besnard’s career: his reputation was growing, yet he evidently still needed income. An etching by Besnard in the Van Gogh Museum collection further underscores the friendship: it bears a personal dedication, ‘à Van Gogh Souvenir cordial Besnard 1889’, and was probably given to Theo a year later ().
Likely though it is that Theo chose The Parting in exchange for the 200 francs, why he selected this particular work is not known. The bold colours characteristic of Besnard, which the Van Gogh brothers discussed in their correspondence, are not especially evident in this painting. And yet, the woman’s warm reddish-orange hair contrasts beautifully with the surrounding green. This effect was probably more striking at the time, as the painting has since lost some of its freshness due to the discolouration of the varnish layer.
Albert Besnard, Woman with a Cape (La femme à la pèlerine), 1889, etching and roulette on paper, 25.2 × 18.3 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
The Parting
Besnard most likely painted this work in London. In any case, a stamp on the back indicates that the artist purchased the canvas from the Wood & Co. artists’ supply shop at 190 Brompton Road in London.
It is also noteworthy that when the work was exhibited long after Theo’s death, at a 1915 charity exhibition in aid of the Russian Red Cross, it was listed in the catalogue under the title Hyde Park. At that time, it was owned by Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925), who had inherited her husband Theo’s entire art collection. This title was probably a mistake, as there is little sign of rolling countryside in this London city park. It is more likely that Besnard drew inspiration from his memories of Rome. Another possible inspiration for the setting is the park of Trentham Hall, the estate with Italian gardens owned by the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, clients and friends of the artist couple. A pavilion was at their disposal at the park, where horseback riding and hunting were ways of spending leisure time. The woman shown in profile bears the features of Besnard’s wife, Charlotte, whom he frequently portrayed throughout his career and who was recognisable to his audience. The horseman in contemporary dress might be interpreted autobiographically, given that Besnard regularly rode horses throughout his life, particularly during his extended sojourn in Rome, and in the park at Trentham. The work may therefore initially have been inspired by an everyday scene in an Italian setting inflected with Victorian influences and shaped into a carefully conceived yet deliberately enigmatic narrative.
The woman’s pose, holding a handkerchief, strongly recalls Besnard’s etching Tristesse (). Published in June 1887 in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, this print is related to (though not part of) the print series La Femme, in which Besnard portrayed the stages of a woman’s life in an impressionistic and symbolist manner. Although The Parting is clearly a study, Besnard signed it in red at the lower right, indicating that the work was indeed intended to leave his atelier. Within his oeuvre, both the painting style and the landscape are comparable only to Eve (), which is more than twice as large. In that painting too, the model bears the features of Besnard’s wife. Eve was sold by Boussod, Valadon & Cie in August of 1888.
Apart from a later mural in the Peace Palace in The Hague, this is the only painting by Besnard in a Dutch public collection. Although it does not share the ambition of his large society portraits of ladies in evening dress illuminated by artificial light, it is nonetheless an example of Besnard’s thoughtfully composed art – that of an important nineteenth-century French painter who cannot be neatly categorised within any school or movement, but who forged his own path to success between academic tradition and Impressionist colour, combined with Victorian influences and featuring his wife as his model.
Sara Tas
January 2026