Pierre-albert Bégaud (1901-1956) End Of Card Game Nude Portrait Of A Woman

Pierre-Albert BÉGAUD
(Bordeaux 1901 – 1956)
End of game
Oil on canvas
H. 27 cm; L. 46.5 cm
Signed lower right

Pierre-Albert Bégaud is a French portrait and landscape painter born in Bordeaux. He participated, with large frescoes, in the decoration of the Bordeaux Labor Exchange and the Maritime Exchange. He is part of this generation of Aquitaine artists from the interwar period sought after for their landscape and portrait works. He is particularly recognized for his representations of the Basque country which always treat the Pyrenean countryside, its buildings, its atmosphere with excellent feeling. A professor at the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts, he has a very good reputation in his hometown. In 2006, for the fiftieth anniversary of his death, the artist's family bequeathed to the Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts a large collection of drawings and a book retraces the career and life of the painter on this occasion, in The Heart and reason, published by Festin.

Our nude, which is “just a nude” at first glance, is in reality a scene and a story. Wrapped in blue and white sheets that seem to have no end, this completely naked female body is asleep. The face and the ample blond hair are placed on the forearm, while the feet are still slipped under the sheet. In front of this young woman are spread out several playing cards of which we perfectly recognize the ace and the queen of hearts... This display resembles the end of a card game, finished under the sheets.