ARISTIDE MAILLOL (1861-1944) PAYSAGE, circa 1895 Oil... Lot 12

ARISTIDE MAILLOL (1861-1944) PAYSAGE, circa 1895 Oil on canvas Signed lower right Oil on canvas; signed lower right 50 X 65 CM - 19 3/4 X 25 5/8 IN. PROVENANCE Mr. Olivier Lorquin has confirmed the authenticity of this work. Private collection, France. Less well known than his sculptural work and unjustly overshadowed by the artist himself, painting is a full part of Maillol's artistic development, and even constitutes his primary vocation. He enrolled as an auditor, then was officially admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied with the most famous advocates of academic painting of his time, such as Cabanel and Jean-Paul Laurens. But it was the discovery of Cézanne, then Gauguin, that was decisive and made him turn away from academic principles. He also devoted himself very early to landscape painting, particularly in his native South, where he continued to stay several times a year. In our painting, the definition of forms and the overall structure are clearly inherited from the synthetism of Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. On the other hand, unlike the latter, Maillol prefers a slightly cross-hatched brushstroke reminiscent of the neo-impressionist style and not without reference to the Belgian painters of the XX1 group, with whom he was invited to exhibit in 1893. Although Maillol turned to other media in the mid-1890s, first tapestry and then sculpture, painting remained important, becoming the support or matrix for his new research, but also, as he himself said, because "in setting up his easel in nature, he had to look at it. 1 The Group of Twenty is an avant-garde artistic circle founded in Brussels in 1883 by Octave Maus