Chev-original Drawing-gouache-léon Cauvy-horses, Calèches-champs-élysées-19th

LÉON CAUVY (Montpellier, 1874–Algiers, 1933) Horses, carriages and crinolines on the Champs-Élysées Gouache on brown bristol 40.5 x 62 cm Signed lower left Beautiful 19th century pitch pine frame Léon Cauvy is one of the greatest painters of the French school of Algiers. With the animal keeper Paul Jouve, in 1907 he was the first resident of Villa Abd-el-Tif. From 1910 to his death, he was director of the School of Fine Arts in Algiers, where he trained many students. He was also one of the promoters of the Society of Algerian and Orientalist Artists. During the 1925 Exhibition, it was his responsibility to decorate the Algeria pavilion, and during the celebration of the Centenary of French Algeria (1830-1930), he was chosen to compose a poster printed in 30,000 copies. which brought him international fame. Even before winning the Villa Abd-el-Tif, Léon Cauvy had started a great career. Already rewarded by the French Artists jury, he was considered one of the promising talents of his generation. He had developed a technique borrowed from the Anglo-Belgian painter Frank Brangwyn: “Cauvy brings the second planes together in his works and creates a sort of decorative tapestry where all the parts of the painting have the same importance. He borrows from Brangwyn a rounded touch which always places light over the dark. » (Elisabeth Cazenave, La Vila Abd-el-Tif). This is indeed the virtuoso technique of our gouache. The artist plays on the brown reserve of the paper to partition flat areas of color, so that he delimits his shapes, not by traced lines, but by voids of material. It is almost the work of a wood engraver which “spares” its features. The subject evokes nostalgia for a Second Empire elegance that we also find, at the very beginning of the century, in the color prints of Bernard Boutet de Monvel. SOLD WITH ITS CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY