“Les deux vases”

Medium	Oil on canvas
Signed	Signed upper right
Size	32.00" × 26.00" (81.3cm × 66.0cm)
Framed Size	40.00" × 34.00" (101.6cm × 86.4cm)
Dated	1910
Condition	Very good condition
Provenance	Private collection - United States Brady Hart Gallery - Maryland

Summary

Two vases — an arrangement so simple it places all the weight on the painter's ability to make colour and light do the work. In the hands of Georges d'Espagnat (1870–1950) that is more than enough. His palette in still life was suffused with the soft rose, ochre, dusty blue and jade green that run through his work like a personal signature — colours that seem to emerge from the canvas rather than be applied to it, warm and luminous and entirely his own. D'Espagnat came to his manner independently. He spent barely an hour at the École des Beaux-Arts before deciding it had nothing to offer him, and spent his formative years instead in front of the Old Masters in the Louvre — Titian, Tintoretto, the Venetians above all — and in the company of the painters who were reshaping French art around him. He knew Renoir well, visiting him repeatedly on the Côte d'Azur between 1899 and 1904. He was close to Bonnard, Vuillard and Valtat. He helped found the Salon d'Automne in 1903, the exhibition that would give Fauvism its name and its public identity. Yet d'Espagnat remained outside every movement. His work has been called Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Fauve and Nabi at various points — none of the labels quite sticks because he was simply himself, a painter of remarkable individuality who understood colour at a level that few of his contemporaries matched. The brushwork in his still lifes is additive and direct, each stroke placed with quiet conviction, the whole held together by a tonal intelligence that gives the simplest arrangement of flowers or vessels a sense of completeness. His work is held in the Musée d'Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

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Georges D’Espagnat

Georges D'Espagnat Paintings for Sale From the beginning of Georges D'Espagnat's career it was a constant concern of Georges d'Espagnat to assert his originality. His studies at the École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, did not last very long, for he wanted immediate independence and decided…

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