Belle-île At Sunset By Jean-francis Auburtin - Brittany

Pastel on strong paper, signed lower left. Museum glass without reflection. Dimensions without frame on view 25.5 x 72 cm, with frame 46 x 93 cm.

In Auburtin, there is like an intuitive understanding of the landscape with an astonishing monumentality and a power of expression which is translated in its seas, its cliffs, its clouds or its vegetation.

Jean Francis Auburtin (1866-1930) grew up in Paris, in a well-off bourgeois environment. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1888 and followed the teaching of Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Benjamin-Constant. In 1992, at the end of his studies, he married Marthe Deloye, daughter of General Félix Deloye. The newlyweds took a long honeymoon in Italy, where Auburtin studied Renaissance frescoes. Upon his return, he began a career as a decorator, which saw him receive numerous commissions for public buildings of the Third Republic. He painted the ceiling of the dining room of the rector of the Sorbonne, as well as the zoology amphitheater of the faculty. His decor for the Hall of Columns of the Council of State, completed in 1924, is still in place today. Auburtin made a specialty of decorative seascapes where nymphs and naiads populate landscapes inspired by the Mediterranean shores. Critics recognized in him an heir to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the great decorator who was one of the models of the symbolist generation. In Auburtin, there is a kind of intuitive understanding of the landscape with an astonishing monumentality and a power of expression that is translated in his seas, cliffs, clouds or vegetation. In his intellectualized approach to nature, Auburtin the symbolist is no less modern than his impressionist elders. Whether in Brittany, Normandy, the Pyrenees or in the light of the South, Auburtin, unlike the realists or the impressionists, derealizes the landscape, veiling it with a hushed, very soft atmosphere, to create the "decor" of his thoughts and those of the spectator. Jean-Francis Auburtin's taste for Japanese art has marked his work, both in terms of themes and style. He has made extensive use of the technique of Indian ink wash. His compositions feature bold framing with oblique foregrounds, truncated motifs and a space without depth. His palette is lively and intense.