Jules Gustave Besson (1868-1942) - The Sewing Lesson - Oil On Canvas

Large and beautiful painting by the French artist Jules Gustave Besson (1868-1942), a prominent representative of the realist and naturalist movements. The subject represented here is similar to a sewing lesson given by a mother to her little girl. This is a painting probably made at the very beginning of the 1900s. It is signed lower left JG Besson. And bears another signature G. Patron...perhaps a two-handed work...

Dimensions with frame: 106 cm x 85.5 cm
Dimensions without frame: 91 cm x 70 cm

As is. It has several tears, but nothing serious (see photos).

Born in Paris, he took classes from Cabanel, Delaunay and Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux Arts. Jules Besson first painted religious subjects before moving towards realism in genre scenes such as The Laurel Harvesters (Museum of Fine Arts in Marseille). Naturalism, like realism, is a movement in painting that sought to render beings and things in a way that was as close as possible to nature, both in spirit and style. Jules Bastien-Lepage was its great representative in France. In the 1880s, he had a profound influence on young painters, in France but also in Europe and as far as Scandinavia.

Thanks to a travel grant from the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français, Besson traveled to French West Africa. In 1925, he won the Indochina Prize and went to teach at the brand new School of Fine Arts in Hanoi. His stay was extended with his appointment to the Gia Dinh School of Applied Arts, which he directed until 1939. In 1930, he took part in the first Salon of Indochinese Artists in Saigon, where metropolitan artists and students from Indochinese art schools exhibited. He died in Saigon.