Gard Léon (1901-1979) "portrait Of Actress Jeanne Fusier-gir" Paris Guitry Theater Cinema

GARD Léon (1901-1979)

"Portrait of the actress Jeanne Fusier-Gir (1885-1973)"

Oil on canvas,
Signed lower left,

Provenance:
-Sacha Guitry collection,
Family of the painter Léon Gard,

Beautiful and rare portrait the painter Léon Gard who represents the famous French actress Jeanne Fusier-Gir.
This portrait was made by his friend Léon Gard in 1950 in Paris.
This work, treated as a sketch and precise brush stroke, is a realistic portrait with a beautiful harmony in the colors.

Jeanne Fusier-Gir is a famous actress especially for her talent of imitation: in plays, operettas and in the cinema. She will have the privilege of being around and being one of Sacha Guitry's favorite performers. Léon Gard will make two portraits of the actress including a pastiche in the manner of Toulouse Lautrec on order of Sacha Guitry for one of his pieces.

Born in Tulle in Corrèze, the Gard family moved to Morigny, near Etampes and Paris, about ten years later.
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.

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: 65 x 54 cm without frame and 82 x 71cm with its montparnasse frame.

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.