Jean-Francis AUBURTIN (1866-1930). Varengeville, black pines - Lot 141

Jean-Francis AUBURTIN (1866-1930). Varengeville, black pines under a winter sky. Gouache monogrammed lower left. 50 x 73 cm. Mrs Francine Quentin has confirmed the authenticity of this work A certificate can be obtained at the request of the buyer PROVENANCE The artist's family Then by descent to the current owner. Decorator and heir of the thought of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jean-Francis AUBURTIN belongs to this generation of painters who were marked both by impressionist painting and by the symbolist spirit. From 1892 to 1929 he exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes français and at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts works of Symbolist inspiration which can be admired in many French museums both in Paris (Orsay, Petit Palais, Salle à manger du recteur de la Sorbonne, Salle des Colonnes du Conseil d'Etat of which we sold at auction in Andelys on November 27, 2021 under n° 146 a draft of the decor) and in the provinces (Beauvais, Le Havre, Marseille, Morlaix, Pau, Pont-Aven, Vannes ... ) In each of his paintings, Auburtin evokes the effects of light and color at a particular time of day and his research is contemporary with that of Maurice Denis, Maxime Maufra, Henri Moret or Henri Rivière. His perseverance in understanding landscapes and the fluctuations of light are also expressed in the elaboration of series, a process that he borrows as much from Monet as from the masters of Japanese prints. With great dexterity, he fixed on paper the most unusual and picturesque views of the Normandy, Brittany or Provence coasts, the Pyrenean peaks or the Alpine lakes. In 1902, the critic Henri Frantz wrote: "Jean-Francis Auburtin knows how to fit in a few centimeters of paper all the infinity of the sea, and to erect on a sky of a delicate blue, hardly tinted with some strokes of brush, some trees with the unforeseen forms". Ten years later, another critic, Louis Vauxcelles, passed to posterity for having invented the terms of Fauvism and Cubism, completed this judgment with a beautiful formula: "the color of Auburtin's work - the color of his talent - is of an exquisite blueness. The figures are in intimate union with the decor, both true and idealized. The balance of the decorative masses is largely established, without overload or clash".