AUGUSTIN LESAGE (1876-1954)SANS TITREHuile sur... Lot 18

AUGUSTIN LESAGE (1876-1954)SANS TITREHuile sur toileSigned lower rightOil on canvas; signed lower right146,5 X 95,5 CM - 57 5/8 X 37 5/8 IN. PROVENANCEVenteVente, Tajan, Paris, 25October 2010, lot 18 .acquired during this sale by the current owner. EXHIBITIONArras , Musée des Beaux-Arts, Augustin Lesage 1876-1954, 15October 1988-15 January 1989.BIBLIOGRAPHIEAugustin Lesage 1876-1954, exhibition catalogue, Arras, musée des Beaux-Arts; Béthune, musée de l'hôtel de Beaulaincourt, 15octobre 1988-15january 1989; Lausanne, 2février-30avril 1989; Florence, 12mai-10juillet 1989 and LeCaire, automne 1989, P.Sers, Paris: 1989, referenced under n°212 and reproduced pl. 210, p.195."The idea of becoming a painter was extravagant and even unthinkable for a thirty-five year old miner who had been enslaved since his adolescence. Such an eventuality could only be evoked by his guides, Leonardo da Vinci and then Marius of Tyana, and to the great confusion of Lesage himself, who was careful not to open his mind to anyone, especially not his own: 'I was afraid that people would think I was crazy'. When he had to carry out the order to buy painting materials and cross the coronet with his canvas rolled over his shoulder, he died of shame. But Lesage had the unconscious trick of passing his pictorial vocation through spiritual mediumship and thus finding a breach in the socio-cultural dam. The confiscation of art by the bourgeoisie had to be a redhibitory act for the pretension of a worker to communicate with Leonardo da Vinci to appear less insane than that of becoming a painter! In retrospect, however, we can be pleased, perhaps a little cynically, with the dissuasive effect of the elite culture and the obligation Lesage was forced to take the side path of spiritualism. To be thus excluded from any artistic pretension has detached him from the museum's models from the outset. If Lesage had deliberately devoted his leisure time as a miner to paint