Autumn At The Washerwomen's Corner In Saint Florent Le Vieil By Marie Sourice (1906-1979)

Oil on canvas depicting a Loire landscape of Saint Florent le Vieil and its castle. This charming painting was made by Marie Sourice (1906-1979), an Angevin painter. This painting accurately reflects the colours that the Loire can offer in mid-season. Beautiful depth, a luminous painting. Marie Sourice was a painter passionate about the flowery villages of her native Anjou, with a strong connection to the small town of Saint Florent le Vieil, which she painted tirelessly. She owes her introduction to painting to a painter she met in Brittany, Maurice Levis (1860-1940), a member of the Society of French Artists, who painted landscapes of France and the Orient and who himself had among his masters, a landscape painter with recognised talent: Harpignies. Two trips to Algeria, in 1936 and 1938, which in turn confronted her with the colours of the Orient, certainly also played a role in her training as an artist and also contributed significantly to lightening her palette, with increasingly vivid colours. Marie Sourice had also taken classes in Paris with Maurice Lévis, himself a former student of Corot. In her family, she was called "Mimie". And all the Florentais who knew her and for whom she had become such a familiar figure also called her "Mimie Sourice". We were used to seeing her in the streets of old Saint-Florent or on the banks of the Loire, sitting on her folding chair, wearing her blouse, her palette in one hand, her brushes in the other, painting the landscape before her eyes. Often Mont-Glonne with its famous abbey church in its green setting and the Loire below. Or, in a much more structured way, an old porch, decorated with a wisteria, an old house, with its corner of garden, always in bloom, to which she never failed to add a touch of life, a human note. Always ready to engage in conversation, in the friendliest tone and with everyone: old people or young kids, Florentais or tourists, always smiling, but frank too. Everywhere at home in Anjou, we found her setting up her easel in the heart of a village or at the water's edge, to paint increasingly flowery canvases. No one has forgotten her cherry and peach trees in bloom, springing up above the walls of the alleys of old Saint-Florent, her Judas trees on the banks of the Loire and her taste for lilacs, jasmines, wallflowers and especially wisteria which made her truly the "wisteria painter". Frame dimensions 44 x 36 cm Oil dimensions 35 x 27.5 cm Delivery by colissimo, with suitable protection, allow 40 euros for France, on estimate for other destinations. Contact me at 06 78 87 61 61