Note Type
Artist’s Intent NoteNote
"Albert Rutherston applied the precision of his academic training to create this painting. In the center of the village stands the Benedictine Abbey of SaintSeine. Rutherston depicts the medieval town and its thirteenth century Burgundian Gothic monastery embedded within the landscape in exacting detail. The long shadows of midsummer mirror the undulating hills of the surrounding farmland" (Impressionist Legacies 20).Note Type
Historical NoteNote
"Rutherston was a frequent travel companion of the influential English Post Impressionist Walter Sickert, whose close associations with Edgar Degas and James Abbott McNeill Whistler impressed him as a young artist. However, Rutherston never fully embraced the expressive colors of the London-based artists known as the Camden Town Group, which Sickert initiated in 1911. On the same excursion to France that he completed St. Seine L’Abbaye, he began experimenting with watercolor —a medium that quickly became his preference. Not long after, Rutherston gradually moved away from oil painting and became increasingly involved in book illustration and theatrical stage design" (Impressionist Legacies 20).