Gard Léon (1901-1979) "still Life With Withe Sugar Bowl, Ruscus And Glassware" Toulon Paris Provence Winter

GARD Léon (1901-1979)

"Still life with a white sugar bowl, with ruscus and glassware, Toulon 1929"

Oil on canvas from A.Bouis House 27 Rue Lafayette in Toulon,
Signed on the top right,

Provenance: Famille de l' artist,

Luminous work of the painter Léon Gard which represents a still life composed of glassworks, a vase of ruscus, a white sugar bowl and oranges on an entablature. From 1926 to 1932, the painter Léon Gard made several stays in Toulon and painted female nudes as well as still lifes embellished with fruits and vegetation of the region, with warm and intense colors.

Born in Tulle in Corèze, the Gard family settled ten years later in Morigny near Etampes and then in Paris.
From the age of 12, Léon Gard shows his artistic predispositions by creating his charcoal portrait.
At 16, he copies old paintings for a play "Little Queen". He receives encouragement from the state and is proposed as member of the Salon d'Automne the following year.

In 1922, he entered the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, in the studio of the painter Ernest Laurent, but not supporting the theories of his teachers and the atmosphere that reigns in this school, he signed a contract with the Georges Chéron, an art dealer exhibiting Soutine, Foujita and Van Dongen. His friend and patron, Louis Metman, director of the Museum of Decorative Arts, then allocates a pension for him to paint in Toulon. The economic crisis of 1931 forced the painter to find a job in a painting restoration workshop which he became the boss. At the same time, he continues to send his works to the Salon de la Nationale and to exhibit at Galerie Charpentier and Bernheim in Paris.
Thanks to his job, he becomes friends with Sacha Guitry, whom he will portray and who will buy several paintings for his personal collection.

In 1946, Léon Gard founded the Apollo art magazine and began a crusade against non-figurative painting. In order to leave the Parisian tumult, the artist goes to stay several times at the castle of Bonshommes in the forest of Isle Adam and will take pleasure in representing the Bonshommes Park according to the vagaries of time and seasons.
Léon Gard is a great colourist who strives to represent what he sees accurately in compositions where he sometimes expresses his love for the precise outline, the detail, the weight of things; at other times, in a wider way, he abandons himself to his love of the atmosphere and the colorful vibrations; finally, he tries on a few occasions to melt these two almost irreconcilable problems into one in the same work.

For more information on the artist, we can refer to the website dedicated to the painter: www.leongard.fr

Size: 73 x 60 cm without frame and 92 x 79 cm with its montparnasse frame in gilded wood.

A catalog on the painter Léon Gard (1901-1979) and a certificate of the right holder will be given to the purchaser

For more information, contact us.