Bernard Boutet de Monvel (Paris, 1881 - Les Açores, 1949) - Lot 12

Bernard Boutet de Monvel (Paris, 1881 - Les Açores, 1949) Study for "L'Hiver Graphite, pen and India ink, squared with red ink Studio stamp lower right 30.5 x 38 cm 1912 Antique oak stick This highly structured drawing prepares one of Boutet de Monvel's most important paintings - and one of those to which he was most attached, as he had it published several times and exhibited it at the 1920 Salon d'Automne. Painted in Nemours in 1920, the work is the last portrait of his grandmother, Madame Charles Baigue. As Stéphane-Jacques Addade writes, the image "plays with the geometrisation of forms, frontality and synthetism". Rigor and symmetry dominate a modernist composition that breaks with the arabesques of Art Nouveau. The tiling reflects an almost mathematical intention to avoid improvisation. In its exact middle, the silhouette of the grandmother stands upright like a figure by Piero della Francesca. But a few sensitive pencil strokes draw her face with an affectionate delicacy.