Les Embiers, Bay Of Sanary Watercolor By Michel Degenne, French Riviera, Provence

Seaside and rocks, watercolor on paper glued to cardboard.

Signed in pencil lower left and located "Les Embiers" lower right
30 X 40 cm and paper 25.5 X 35 cm
Degenne Michel, watercolorist, writer, historian, art critic Poitiers 1903 – Roanne 1988

Preface to a 2007 book dedicated by his son to Michel Degenne, Pierre Étaix wrote:

"Michel Degenne was great. First of all, through his culture and his sensibilities, we can say that he was a great man… …he overflowed with both dynamism in his action and restraint in his reflection, even his meditation. He had the soul of a painter and talent too. In opposition to a kind of local academy "Friends of the Arts"… but not of artists, he had created the group "Art libre" - a derisory pleonasm - to help young talents. Beyond passion, it was his love of art, which kept him alive, which I remember all the more fondly because its absence today so strongly symbolises this lack of beauty in the gratuitousness of the act. It becomes bigger and bigger in my memory. »
Pierre Étaix (1928 – 2016, filmmaker, actor, clown, cartoonist, poster artist, ...)