Further Images
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Signed | Signed closer left and titled on original label verso |
| Size | 26.00" × 36.00" (66.0cm × 91.4cm) |
| Framed Size | 30.00" × 40.00" (76.2cm × 101.6cm) |
| Dated | 1937 |
| Condition | Very good condition |
| Provenance | Galerie Moos - Geneva, Switzerland (label verso) Christie's - Monte Carlo, 3rd May 1989, Lot 33 |
| About this Painting | La Couturière (The Seamstress) — A young woman in a blue polka-dot dress sits bent over her needlework, drawing a length of warm coral-red cloth across a table laid with a soft pink cloth. Her sewing box lies open beside her, a small framed picture propped nearby, the whole scene gathered before a pale marble chimneypiece and a curtain of deep yellow. It is a quiet domestic moment, observed with great tenderness — and it is the very subject that Albert André made his own. André (was the finest of the French intimiste painters after Bonnard, and like Bonnard he found his subjects close to home: sunlit interiors, women absorbed in everyday tasks, the gentle disorder of a lived-in room. Here the pleasure is all in the colour — the blue of the dress against the coral fabric, the dusty pinks of the tablecloth, the golden warmth of the curtain — and in the loose, confident handling of paint that lets the light do the work. Nothing is laboured; everything breathes. Born in Lyon, where he first trained designing patterns for the city's silk trade, André went to Paris in 1889 and studied at the Académie Julian alongside Bonnard and Louis Valtat. His life changed in 1894 when Auguste Renoir saw his work, befriended him, and introduced him to the great dealer Durand-Ruel. The two became inseparable — André wrote the first monograph on Renoir, published in his friend's lifetime, and became one of his most trusted companions. From 1917 he served as curator of the museum at Bagnols-sur-Cèze, later renamed in his honour, and his paintings hang today in collections including the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. La Couturière shows exactly the warmth and intimacy that earned him that reputation. |
£16,000.00
GBP
