The Child with a Cigarette, 1887
Oil on canvas.
Signed lower right.
H_84 cm W_43 cm
Provenance: Private collection
There is no doubt about the links between Achille Granchi-Taylor and Paul Gauguin, the emblematic painter of the Pont-Aven school being the author of a portrait of Achille Granchi-Taylor painted in 1885 in Paris (kept in the Basel Museum of Fine Arts), before the two men joined Cornwall the following year.
Our painting, done in the summer of 1887, is reminiscent of Paul Gauguin's "Children Wrestlers" painted in 1888: the location, the scene, the treatment of the bodies with their blurred curves suggesting movement could lead one to imagine that they are the same boys.
While Paul Gauguin settled in Le Pouldu in 1889, from where he left after a year to explore the Pacific, Achille Granchi-Taylor took refuge in Concarneau, already the home of William Bougureau and Fernand Cormon, where he stayed for about thirty years, putting the impeccable quality of his drawing at the service of the working people. He captures emotions with sensitivity, his recognizable style highlights a striking reality under a poetic haze created by a play of color mixed with his incisive and intense line.
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