Alphonse OSBERT (1857-1939 )The Morning Prayer,... Lot 17

Alphonse OSBERT (1857-1939 )The Morning Prayer, 1905Oil on canvas. Signed, dated and dedicated lower right: "to my beloved daughter this morning prayer, in memory of her first communion June 8, 1905". 40 x 26,5 cmProvenance : - Yolande Osbert, daughter of the artist. - Family of the artist. Bibliography : - Véronique Dumas, Alphonse Osbert (1857-1939) : Vie, œuvre, art. Essai et catalog raisonné de l'oeuvre complet, doctoral thesis under the direction of Professor Jean-Paul Bouillon, Université Blaise-Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand II, 1999, cat. n°102, pp. 376, 386. - Véronique Dumas, Le Peintre symboliste Alphonse Osbert (1857-1939), Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2005, pp. 134, 142 . "This painting was given by the painter to his daughter Yolande on June 8, 1905 on the occasion of her first communion. The scene takes place at the edge of a forest and represents a female figure dressed in a long white tunic, meditating and praying, in perfect communion with nature. The sun rises and illuminates the foliage of the trees, dissipating the slightly bluish mist of the morning. This morning light is rendered in small pointillist strokes characteristic of Osbert's style, which was largely influenced by the theories of Chevreul and the neo-impressionist technique. Close to the writings of Verlaine, in particular the poem En sourdine (Fêtes galantes, 1869), La Prière du matin expresses both silence and meditation in the face of nature. The general idea is common to many paintings, but La Prière du matin is among those that could be transpositions of this poem. The attitude suggested by Verlaine is identical to that of the figure in the painting, in ecstasy, with his eyes closed and his hands crossed over his chest. In this painting, Osbert affirms his belief in nature as a divine manifestation. The religious feeling does not lie in the representation of a traditional religious scene but in the expression of an idea, in the rendering of a gesture." Véronique Dumas, October 2022