Gustave Larée 1867-1940 Monks In Meditation, Large Painting, 1907

Gustave Larée
1867 (Bordeaux) - 1940, French
Monks in meditation
Painting, oil on canvas
Signed and dated 1907 lower right
Painting: 81 x 62.5 cm (31.9 x 24.6 inches)
Wooden frame and brass motif: 95.5 x 80 cm (376. x 31.5 inches (warning large size)
Very good condition, 2 small discreet restorations (see back)
This is probably the painting exhibited at the Paris Salon (Grand-Palais des Champs-Elysées) of 1908 under number 1017 ("Monks in meditation").

A pupil of Jean Albéric Dupuy then of Léon Bonnat, Larée was at the age of 28 the 1895 laureate of the first Grand Prix de Rome. He thus became a resident of the Villa Medici in Roma until 1899. Back in France, he exhibited in 1903 at the Salon des Artistes Français. In Bordeaux, he joined L'Atelier, an association of professional artists from Bordeaux founded in 1906. In 1921 he painted a huge fresco for the Théatre Femina in Bordeaux (The Apotheosis of Pierrot). He is also the portrait painter of the Bordeaux high society and he produced a series of twelve paintings with the subject of the Bordeaux port in the 18th century.
His paintings are in the Museum of fine arts of Bordeaux (Head of a Girl, The Church of San Pietro in Carcanella) and at the ENSBA of Paris (The Rhetoric).