Further Images
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Signed | Signed lower centre right |
| Size | 20.00" × 29.00" (50.8cm × 73.7cm) |
| Framed Size | 29.00" × 38.00" (73.7cm × 96.5cm) |
| Dated | c. 1980 |
| Condition | Very good condition |
| Provenance | The collection of Dominique Sassi This work is recorded in the Brasilier Archives |
| About this Painting | Three horses at the edge of blue water — it is one of the most characteristic images in André Brasilier's work, and one of the most beautiful. The animals stand or move against a landscape of still ponds and sky, their forms simplified into something between observation and symbol, the whole held in a palette of cool blues and soft greens that gives the scene its particular quality of stillness and reverie. Brasilier (born 1929) has described horses as "a superb creation, charged with symbolism, strength, dynamism and beauty," and they have been central to his vision throughout a career spanning more than seven decades. But in a painting like this they are not the subject in the conventional sense — they are part of a larger harmony, a compositional element as much as a presence, their dark forms giving the eye something to rest on within the enveloping blue of water and sky. The influence of Japanese prints is audible in the flatness and economy of the composition; the influence of Matisse in the way colour is allowed to do structural work that other painters would leave to drawing. Born in Saumur in the Loire Valley to a family of painters, Brasilier enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1949 and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1953 at the age of twenty-three. He spent the following three years at the Villa Medici in Rome. His first major retrospective was held at the Château de Chenonceau in 1980. Since then he has had retrospectives at the Musée Picasso in Antibes, the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and institutions across Germany, Japan, Korea and the United States. He continues to paint in Paris. |
SOLD
