Pierre Forest (French, 1881-1971)
Sailing Boats on the Venice Lagoon
Oil on board

Signed lower right Forest. 18 x 21 inches (46 x 53 cm), the frame 22 x 25 inches (56 x 64 cm). Carved giltwood frame. Good original condition, the impasto stable.

The sky is laid on as heavily as the sails. Every part of the board has been worked with the knife, the clouds in raised pale plates, the water in short turquoise ridges, and the sails in thick orange, rose and cream that stand up from the surface.

Five sails fill the lagoon, the largest of them orange over a blue hull crowded with small dark figures, the others rising behind it in rose and paler orange, with one in cream at the far left. Across the water a campanile and a long pale palace front sit low on the quay in pink and white, with a single column at the water's edge. In the lower right corner a gondolier stands at the stern of a black gondola, the only boat on the water without a sail.