Anna Morstadt - Portrait Of Mr. Fourquez

Anna MORSTADT Vienna, 1874 – Paris, 1946 Pastel 66.5 x 57.5 cm (75.5 x 66.5 cm with frame) Signed and dated “Morstadt / 1927” Titled on the back on an old label “Portrait of M . Fourquez - Pastel » Beautiful painted wooden frame from the 1920s Born in Vienna and of Austrian nationality, Anna Morstadt is a woman painter who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She became known with her orientalist paintings of North Africa. She regularly exhibited genre scenes, but also portraits of her contemporaries, at the Salon des Artistes Français. These pastel portraits (“powerful, dazzling and harmonious” to use the words of the art critic of the Revue Française in 1914) represent notables, ministers, lawyers at the court of appeal, chief accountants and others. Our painting is one of these pastel portraits. It was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1927 under catalog number 2624 (“Portrait of M. Fourquez - Pastel”). This is a very beautiful portrait, that of an elegant and well-dressed man, full of allure and confidence in his gaze and pose. It is perhaps André Octave Fourquez, notable of the city of Amiens and chief accountant who was proposed by the prefect for the Legion of Honor in the 1920s.