Menu Create a Collector Profile

Madame Verdier by Paul Peel

Artwork by Paul Peel, Madame Verdier

Paul Peel
Madame Verdier

oil on canvas
signed lower right; titled on a gallery label on the reverse
15.5 x 12.5 ins ( 39.4 x 31.8 cms )

Auction Estimate: $12,000.00$8,000.00 - $12,000.00

Price Realized $10,030.00
Sale date: May 28th 2019

Provenance:
Estate of the artist
Isaure Verdier Peel
By descent to Marguerite Peel
G. Blair Lang Gallery, Toronto
H.R. Milner Collection, Edmonton
Private Collection, Toronto
Exhibited:
The H.R. Milner Collection, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1976, no. 51
Paul Peel: A Retrospective, 1860-1892, London Regional Art Gallery, September 6 - October 26, 1986, no. 29
Literature:
J.E. Martin, The H.R. Milner Collection, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1976, reproduced
Victoria Baker, Paul Peel: A Retrospective, 1860-1892 , London Regional Art Gallery,1986, page 42, reproduced page 120
Paul Peel met Isaure Franchette Verdier, the Danish-born painter he would go on to marry, in Pont-Aven in 1884. The two artists were visiting the Brittany region, she with her mother, Signe, and he with his sister, Mildred, where they reportedly stayed at the same pension. Isaure and Paul developed a romantic relationship, and were subsequently engaged by the following summer and married by January 1886. This detailed portrait depicts Peel’s mother-in-law, which was shown in May at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen. Art historian Victoria Baker writes that “Signe Verdier was an important figure in Peel’s life. A clever businesswoman, she managed both the Verdier glove factory established by her late husband, and a fashionable antique shop situated in the heart of Copenhagen[.] Supportive of her son-in-law’s career, she apparently exhibited his work in the shop windows.”

Share this item with your friends

Paul Peel
(1860 - 1892) RCA,OSA

HighlightsWatch Artist

Paul Peel was born in London, Ontario in 1860. His early art training was provided in London by his father, John Robert Peel, and William Lees Judson, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia under Thomas Eakins. He later moved to Paris where he received art instruction at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Paul Gerome and at the Acadmie Julien under Benjamin Constant, Henri Doucet, and Jules Lefebvre. He then traveled widely in Canada and Europe exhibiting as a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy. He also exhibited at international shows like the Paris Salon.

Peel's work was very popular in both his lifetime and today. It is executed mainly in oil and employs genre, landscape, marine and portrait subjects. His conservative style reflected the official one then taught in the French government academies but, at the time of his death, Peel appeared to be changing his style toward impressionism. He died in Paris in 1892.