Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (French, 1851-1934) Une rue à Meudon, circa 1894-95 Oil on canvas, with painted rounded corners 25-1/2 x 14-3/4 inches (64.8 x 37.5 cm) PROVENANCE: Thierry-Lannon & Associés, Brest, France, May 4, 2019, lot 267; Galerie Thinus, Schilde, Belgium, 2021; Acquired from the above by the present owner. Jill-Elyse Grossvogel has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work. The lot is accompanied by her certificate of authenticity dated October 5, 2026. Her dossier on the painting is available upon request. Schuffenecker's attachment to Meudon began in childhood. Born in Fresne-Saint-Mamès in 1851, he was two when his father died and his mother moved her sons to Meudon, where relatives lived and she worked in a laundry. Although raised by an aunt and uncle in Paris, Meudon remained tied to his family history. The expanding railway network later enabled him to return to its streets and surrounding countryside, recurring subjects in his art. Schuffenecker's path to painting was intertwined with Paul Gauguin's (see lot 69063). They met in 1872 as stockbrokers at Bertin, studied the Old Masters at the Louvre, and trained after work. Schuffenecker later studied under Carolus-Duran and attended the Académie Colarossi. After the 1882 stock market collapse, he taught drawing at the Lycée Michelet in nearby Vanves while continuing to paint and exhibit. By the late 1880s, Schuffenecker belonged to the Post-Impressionist circle. He participated in the final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 and, with Gauguin, organized the Impressionist and Synthetist exhibition at the Café des Arts during the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Known as the Volpini exhibition, it included Émile Bernard, Charles Laval, Louis Anquetin, and Louis Roy. Schuffenecker also collected works by Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh. Executed circa 1894–95, Une rue à Meudon belongs to Schuffenecker's Symbolist period, when his response to landscape became increasingly contemplative. As Jill-Elyse Grossvogel observes in her dossier on the painting, the composition's rounded corners are characteristic of his pastels and paintings of the 1890s. She connects this formal device to his involvement with theosophy, the Rose+Croix salons, the mysticism of Sâr Péladan, and the esoteric journal Le Coeur, encouraged by Antoine de La Rochefoucauld and Jules Bois. Here, the softened boundaries of the image complement the quiet, dreamlike character of an otherwise ordinary street. The painting is one of numerous works in oil and pastel inspired by Meudon. Grossvogel notes that in the summer of 1895 the artist boarded with Mme Lejass at 11 rue Leclerc. Rather than choose one of the town's celebrated residents or monuments as his subject, he turned to a modest corner, possibly on the rue des Pierres, where he had once lived and his mother still resided. The street lay just steps from the monumental wall surrounding the seventeenth-century Château de Meudon and its extensive park (Grossvogel, Claude-Émile Schuffenecker: Catalogue raisonné, vol. 1, San Francisco: Alan Wofsky Fine Arts, 2000, no. 492, p. 193). The narrow vertical format transforms the modest lane into a steep, enveloping passage. Buildings press inward from either side: ochre facades and projecting tiled roofs at left are countered by the nearly unbroken mauve-grey wall at right. Between them, the street recedes toward smaller houses, foliage, and a slender opening of distant landscape. The exaggerated height of the walls intensifies the sensation of looking upward and inward at once. The blue-clad foreground figure establishes scale while emphasizing the solitude of the setting. Schuffenecker does not treat the street as a setting for anecdote; its stillness is itself the subject. Portable pastels allowed Schuffenecker to work outdoors, recording effects of light and color for later development in the studio. Although painted in oil, Une rue à Meudon preserves that freshness. Its dry, broken touches and chalky harmonies recall pastel, while the flattened architecture and blue-violet outlines reveal Synthetist influence. The composition evokes Gauguin's Breton villages, yet its restrained palette and introspective mood remain distinctly Schuffenecker's own. The enclosing walls, steeply receding street, and solitary figure turn a familiar corner of Meudon into an image at once closely observed and seemingly filtered through memory. This movement from observed detail toward an inward experience of place gives the painting its Symbolist character. Connected to the beginnings of his life, Meudon becomes a setting through which Schuffenecker expresses his mature vision. HID12401132022 © 2026 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved www.HA.com/TexasAuctioneerLicenseNotice

Thierry-Lannon & Associés, Brest, France, May 4, 2019, lot 267; Galerie Thinus, Schilde, Belgium, 2021; Private collection, Houston, acquired from the above, 2021.

Unlined. A few scattered surface accretions.
Under UV: no apparent inpainting evident.
Framed Dimensions 33 X 22.125 Inches