Paul SÉRUSIER (French, 1864-1927). Les Licornes,... Lot 32

Paul SÉRUSIER (French, 1864-1927). Les Licornes, 1913 Canvas signed and dated lower right and preparatory drawing. Canvas H. 60, L. 81 cm. Drawing : H. 24, L. 31 cm. Bibliography : Marcel GUICHETEAU, "Paul Sérusier tome II", catalogue raisonné, éd. Graphédis, 1976, p. 122, reproduced under numbers 182 and 183. Paul Sérusier (1865-1927) is the painter theorist of the Nabis movement. In 1888 he met Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven through his friend Émile Bernard. The small oil he made at that time on the lid of a cigar box, "Le Talisman", is one of the most important works of the late 19th century. Sérusier breaks with the imitative constraint of painting and becomes the prophet of sensation. Pious, sometimes mystical, Sérusier left his native Paris to bathe in the light of a destination that seemed exotic to him: Brittany. There he intellectualized Nabism, integrating mathematics, geometry and above all medieval religious concepts, which were becoming more and more prominent in his work. However, the artist gave up entering the orders out of love for his wife Marguerite. Together they fell in love with the tapestries of the Middle Ages, a source of a new vocabulary. At the Musée de Cluny, Sérusier spends hours in front of the famous "Lady with Unicorn", a masterpiece of the 16th century. The oil on canvas that we present dates from 1913, one year after the marriage of Paul and Marguerite. Exceptionally accompanied by his preparatory drawing, a figure half magus half shepherd is surrounded by three unicorns in a typically Nabis coloured landscape. The symbol of purity that unites two artists and the absolute reference to a beloved tapestry are read.