Victor CHARRETON (Bourgoin-Jallieu, 1864 - Clermont-Ferrand,... Lot 56

Victor CHARRETON (Bourgoin-Jallieu, 1864 - Clermont-Ferrand, 1936) Landscape Oil on cardboard framed Signed lower left 40 x 55 cm Provenance : private collection Whether on canvas or cardboard, with a brush or a knife, Victor Charreton made the landscape his hobbyhorse. The Auvergne, of course, his adopted region following his marriage to the daughter of an entrepreneur from the Puy-de-Dôme, is his favorite motif. However, he does not shy away from the landscapes of Brittany or Provence and even, beyond the borders, Spain or Morocco. Coming from a wealthy family that pushed him towards a career as a lawyer, he settled in Saint-Amant-Tallende in 1894 with his wife, then gave up his career in 1902 to devote himself solely to painting. In the company of Pierre Bonnard and Frantz Jourdain he co-founded the Salon d'automne in Paris the following year. He was no longer a confidential painter but a neo-impressionist artist acclaimed by art critics. In 1911, he gathered around him the painters of the Murol School. In 1922, he became the lord of Saint-Amant after acquiring the medieval castle of the Tour Fondue. More than three thousand landscapes appear in his catalog! A common thread runs through his creations: the intimate connotation of the place represented, sometimes animated by a solitary character, in this case a peasant woman with a stooped back who is using a cane. He cherishes the hamlets built in the undergrowth, being particularly interested in the rendering of foliage and trees in bloom. Flamboyant red roofs emerge and structure the composition. The building with the gabled roof in the center of the painting is represented in another work entitled Armchair in the Garden, an oil on canvas presented at Sotheby's New York (lot 81 of the sale of 25/02/1992). The red roofs also appear in Les Amandiers en fleurs près de la maison, oil on panel presented at Pillon in Calais (lot 116 of the sale of 14/03/2004), where we can guess the influences of Monet and Bonnard. As well as in Les Toits rouges, oil on cardboard presented at Piasa in Drouot (lot 104 of the sale of 14/12/2005) where the roofs seen from above are drowned in the vegetal fabric where the red structures the composition. Virginie Journiac, Expert approved by the C.E.C.O.A., the F.N.E.P.S.A. and the C.E.D.E.A.