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Jacqueline MARVAL (Quaix en Chartreuse 1866 - Paris 1932)
Th…
See original version (French)
88
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Jacqueline MARVAL (Quaix en Chartreuse 1866 - Paris 1932)
Th…
See original version (French)
Estimate €2,000 - €3,000
Voluntary lot
Description
Jacqueline MARVAL (Quaix en Chartreuse 1866 - Paris 1932)
The Spaniard in Biarritz
Oil on cardboard
37.8 x 46 cm
Signed lower right Marval
Titled on the back of the board "Espagnol à Biarritz" (Spanish in Biarritz)
Bears on the back the stamp of the colour merchant Sennelier in Paris
We would like to thank the Comité Jaqueline Marval for confirming the authenticity of this work, which will be included in the artist's Catalogue raisonné currently in preparation.
In 1895, she left Grenoble to settle in Paris, in the Montparnasse district, where she met many artists, including Flandrin, Marquet, Matisse, Van Dongen, Marquet, Manguin, Camoin and Picasso. She painted landscapes and adopted a lively, spontaneous style, the antithesis of the works produced in Gustave Moreau's studio. She was already showing the mark of her work, with supple, rapid strokes, no embellishments, and luminous pastel shades.
Her entry into the 20th century marked a turning point in her life. In 1901, she took part in the Salon des Indépendants, marking the start of a real career as a painter. She was noticed by the famous art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who bought some of her most notable works. She made a breakthrough in a predominantly male world, becoming both creator and model. She developed a chromatic poetry of delicate pastel colours, exuding a striking perfume of softness and freshness. The subject of childhood becomes a perfect pretext for these experiments. In Deux enfants, Jacqueline Marval manages to convey all the tenderness of the gesture uniting these two children in front of a floral setting.
During the 1920s, Jacqueline Marval established herself as a fully recognised figure on the art scene. In the company of Jules Flandrin, and through her circle of acquaintances - notably the couturier Paul Poiret - she discovered Biarritz, where she now stayed on a regular basis. The seaside town became one of the major centres of her pictorial imagination. These stays gave rise to a body of work devoted to the shores of the Atlantic, with figures of bathers and fishermen, testifying to the artist's renewed attention to social spaces and holiday resorts. But these paintings go beyond the simple motif of the seaside scene. They are a sensitive testimony to the social and cultural changes of the inter-war period: the emergence of the beach as a place of modern leisure, changes in dress and the gradual transformation of the relationship between the body and the public space. Through these representations, Jacqueline Marval is gradually abandoning the traditional academic nude. Her work reveals a change in the way we look at the body, which is now part of a collective, social and modern experience.
She alternated between beach scenes, such as La femme en rose, plage (Woman in Pink, Beach) and L'Enfant et son ombre (Child and his Shadow) (circa 1920-1930), featuring men, women and children bathing, lounging and enjoying themselves. She sometimes depicts a crowd of holidaymakers, sometimes isolated figures. In this way, she bears witness to this new fashion and the democratisation of seaside pleasures. In La femme en rose, plage, we recognise the red and white parasols typical of the Biarritz seaside, as in Un coin de plage, Biarritz and in La Fillette au cabas circa 1923.
Biarritz was also an opportunity for Marval to paint portraits of women, such as L'Espagnole à Biarritz, and self-portraits, sometimes in disguise. One of her recurring subjects was the image of the Spanish woman, whom she portrayed in all her colours and in a particularly modern way, with large eyes covered in make-up, a bobbed haircut and fashionable outfits. Louis Vauxcelles even dedicated the following words to her: "Just as we say a Renoir, a Denis, a Maillol, to sum up a certain type of woman imagined by these artists, so must we say: a Marval" (Louis Vauxcelles, Mme Marval, in Gil Blas, 5 March 1912).
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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