“Café sur la plage”

Medium	Oil on canvas
Signed	Signed lower left
Size	9.00" × 14.00" (22.9cm × 35.6cm)
Framed Size	15.00" × 20.00" (38.1cm × 50.8cm)
Dated	1930
Condition	Very good condition
Provenance	Private collection - United States

Summary

A beach café in full swing — tables crowded, figures milling, the Mediterranean visible beyond the awning, palm trees just catching the eye at the right edge of the canvas. In nine by fourteen inches Lucien Adrion has packed an entire afternoon of southern French summer life, and the result is a small painting of considerable vivacity. The handling is fast and assured. Individual figures are indicated rather than described — a hat here, a dress there, the suggestion of chairs and glasses — each mark placed with the economy of a painter who began his career as a fashion illustrator and never lost the draughtsman's instinct for getting the essentials down quickly and accurately. The palette is light and warm, the colours of the French Riviera in high summer: white and pink and pale blue, with accents of red and green that catch the eye and push the scene forward. The paint is applied thinly, the canvas texture showing through in places, giving the whole surface a freshness and immediacy that heavier handling would have destroyed. 1930 is a good date for Adrion. By then he had settled firmly into the subjects and technique that defined his mature career — the beach scenes, the café terraces, the animated social life of Normandy and the Côte d'Azur that collectors in France and abroad were beginning to seek out with real enthusiasm. He had exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants from 1926 and was fully established in the Montparnasse circle that included Chaim Soutine, among others. Born in Strasbourg in 1889, Adrion moved to Paris at eighteen, studied engraving in Berlin under Hermann Struck — who was also Marc Chagall's teacher — and settled permanently in Montparnasse in 1919. He exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Tuileries throughout his career. He died in Paris in 1953.

£6,950.00

GBP

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