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MILLON

185 - Auguste MAMBOUR (Liège 1896 - 1968) Portrait of a woman Char…
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Estimate €400 - €600
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Description
Auguste MAMBOUR (Liège 1896 - 1968) Portrait of a woman Charcoal 64 x 48 cm Signed lower left Mambour (Tears and wetness) "In truth, this work, as fundamentally classical as it is, is neither a pastiche, nor a reminiscence, nor an anachronism. It is part of the great tradition, but it rebels against academicism. It has heard the lesson of the great masters whom the School has venerated for four centuries, but it is also of its time, it has, positively or negatively, reacted to the experiences of the nineteenth century and it wants, therefore, in the contemporary confusion, to bring its order and say something essential that it feels strongly. [...] So it is going to revolt and, consequently, to fight. He will repudiate the landscape, so dear and so favourable to the Neo-Impressionists. He would come to, or return to, the human figure, which, as with the Ancients, would remain the essential, if not the only, motif of inspiration in his work. But, as he was of his time, and as he had some insight into Fauvism, Cubism and above all Expressionism, which the only magazines that reached Liège between 1914 and 1918 introduced him to through Trubner, Leibl and Corinth, this return to the sources would not be a rehash of illustrious archetypes. [...] For the human being as Mambour paints him no longer satisfies the canons of the School. He would replace formal beauty with expressive beauty. He would create a type of enormous male with swollen rather than muscular limbs, whose bull-like neck supports a head with a low forehead and eyes full of the childish gentleness of colossi who, embarrassed by their Herculean strength, humbly submit it to the moving weakness of the woman they love. It is a primitive humanity, at once virile and tender, still close to animality, and which admirably expresses the essential joys of which Mambour makes no secret. His paintings are entitled: Eating, Doing Nothing, Caressing, Breastfeeding, Offering, Praying, Singing, Uniting, Dreaming, Forgiving. Numerous Maternities also date from this period, showing the real and pure gentleness, the unfeigned and unlettered emotion that can be achieved by this brutal artist who hates nothing so much as blandness and sentimentality". Jules Bosmant, Auguste Mambour, Brussels, Ministry of Education and Les Editions Meddens s.a., 1965, pages 6-7.
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About the sale Small Works by Great Masters - Paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries
Auction location
Auction time 06/23/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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