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Lot 366:
Description
Keywords: NO RESERVE, Paul-Elie Gernez, French, double-sided drawing, charcoal, gouache highlights, modernist, figural composition, three women, landscape, clouds, twentieth century, expressive, reversible artwork
Summary:
Paul-Elie Gernez (1888-1948) double-sided composition in charcoal with gouache highlights, showing a figural scene with three women on one side and a landscape on the reverse. Signed at the bottom.
Like Eugène Boudin, Gernez painted many strong studies of the sky. His early work from the 1910s through the early 1920s shows the influence of Neo-Impressionism, the Nabis, and Cubism. Around 1922, he gradually returned to a more realistic figurative approach while developing a more personal visual language. His forms became softer, and by the mid-1920s his distinctive style began to emerge. His brushwork loosened, contours became less fixed, and forms often took on a broken, animated quality. This period is marked by a wide range of color, from the greys of his landscapes to the richer chromatic effects seen in his nudes and floral subjects. His pierre noire drawings are especially notable for their lively execution.
In the years that followed, Gernez reached full maturity as an artist and established what is now recognized as the “Gernez style.” His growing reputation led the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique to commission an oil on panel for the Normandie ocean liner. He was also an accomplished pastelist and is regarded as one of the most skilled users of the medium in the first half of the twentieth century. Working primarily in oil pastel, he used the material in varied ways, drawing sharp lines and highlights with the tip while also pressing or layering the medium to create rich, dense passages with a painterly effect. He could soften passages with his fingertips to achieve velvety, atmospheric tones, especially in flesh. At times, he also prepared his pastel works with tempera or oil. His work is often distinguished by its lush chromaticism, subtle tonal variation, and iridescent surface effects. After being named a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1923, his work entered French and international museum collections. Today, works by Gernez are held in institutions including the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Honfleur Museum.
(Presents well minor age-related toning. Frame shows general wear and loss. Not examined out of frame.)
Measurement: Art: 28 1/4 x 23 in. (71.8 x 58.4 cm.), Frame: 37 3/4 x 32 1/2 in. (95.9 x 82.6 cm.) approx
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