ÉMILE OTHON FRIESZ (1879-1949) PAYSAGE AUX ROCHERS Oil... Lot 19

ÉMILE OTHON FRIESZ (1879-1949) PAYSAGE AUX ROCHERS Oil on canvas Signed lower right Oil on canvas; signed lower right 54 X 65 CM - 21 1/4 X 25 5/8 IN. PROVENANCE Sale, Me Loudmer, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 6 October 1990. Sale, Mes Appay - Gairoard - Besch, Cannes, 19 August 1991, lot 183. Acquired during this sale by the present owner. Private collection, France. BIBLIOGRAPHY Odile Aittouarès and Robert Martin, Émile Othon Friesz: l'œuvre peint, tome I, Édition Aittouarès, Paris: 1995, p. 114 (described and reproduced in black and white). "From the landscape, Othon Friesz extracts the essential lines, in order to organize them systematically; his paintings are first of all a tracing of arabesque, in the rhythms of which the object and the figure, the plant and the cloud are inserted; the particular character of the detail is deliberately sacrificed to that of the whole; the result is what has been called deformations; they are in reality only firm sacrifices to the plastic truth, distinct and independent of the realistic truth. It is the play of the seams that drives the orchestration, and no longer that of the colours. These remain pure, as far as the mixtures are concerned; but Friesz still refuses to grant them the masterly position they occupied in his paintings of the previous period; he dominates them, so as not to let himself be dominated by them any longer; he imposes on them measure, economy; he uses tones that are so close together that they seem grey, at first sight, and which only in the long run deliver the tasty secret of their nuanced riches." Maximilien Gauthier, Othon Friesz, Pierre Cailler, Geneva: 1957, pp. 57-58.