Paul-louis Delance 1848-1924 Study Of A Woman For "the Departure Of The Conscripts, Gare d'Austerlitz"

PAUL-LOUIS DELANCE 1848 - PARIS - 1924
STUDY OF A WOMAN RAISING HER Arm
Pastel on paper
Height: 46.6 cm Width: 30.2 cm
Lower left corner redone.
Signed lower left in pencil “Paul Delance”.

A student of Gérôme at the École des beaux-arts, Delance obtained an honorable mention at the Salon of 1880, which gave him the title of member of the Salon des artistes français. The following year his patriotic painting The Return of the Flag (Senlis museum) earned him a third class medal and in 1888 he obtained the coveted first class medal for The Legend of Saint Denis (Douai museum). His work abounds in subjects of "modern" life, alternating representations of elegant and nostalgic women with more proletarian themes, The Nurse's Bench in Saint-Valéry, Strike in Saint-Ouen (Orsay Museum), or even The Eiffel Tower and the work of the Universal Exhibition in January 1889 (Carnavalet museum). He also practiced religious painting and notably created, from 1895 to 1899, the decoration of the newly built Notre-Dame church in Oloron-Sainte-Marie. Our drawing is preparatory to one of the figures in the foreground of a large painting (211 x 327 cm) produced in 1883, The Departure of the Conscripts, Gare d'Austerlitz (exhibited at Didier Aaron in New York in 1978).