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an oil painting of a man in a brown jacket and black shirtan oil painting of a man in a brown jacket and black shirtan old wooden window with a glass pane in the middle
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Premium DE BAECQUE et Associés - Lyon

377 - Eugène LEROY (1910–2000)
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Estimate €15,000 - €20,000
Sale commission
Description
Eugène LEROY (1910–2000) Self-portrait, 1958 Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right H. 100 cm – W. 81 cm The expressive power of this self-portrait by Eugène Leroy is immediately apparent. The painter has depicted himself in a frontal, sculptural pose. His elongated face, with its powerful tones ranging from pink to grey, appears to rest upon the base formed by his brown jacket and black jumper. A green background – one of the artist’s favourite colours, with its infinite nuances – illuminates and gives structure to the whole composition. The self-portrait is one of the central themes in Eugène Leroy’s oeuvre. More than seventy years separate *The Young Man in the Window* (1927) from *Self-Portrait for Emma* (1999), demonstrating the extraordinary importance of this subject, the ultimate subject of representation, explored through engravings and drawings and elevated to the absolute in painting. The exhibition ‘Eugène Leroy: Self-Portrait’ at La Piscine in Roubaix in 2004, whose catalogue contains Éric de Chassey’s remarkable essay on the painter, highlighted this continuity with its infinite nuances, culminating, in the words of Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, in ‘the fateful moment when reason, supplanting the creative imagination, constitutes Leroy’s very existence, merged with his work solely on the grounds of resemblance’. Whilst travelling through France in 1959, at the time our painting was created, the great German artist Georg Baselitz (1938–2026) was deeply moved upon discovering Leroy’s painting, the power of which would profoundly influence his own work and about which he would write these final, sublime words in 1987: ‘Quite simply, painting never ceases; a tireless will; the representation of Painting.’
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About the sale 20th–21st CENTURIES – DESIGN – MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART
Auction location
Auction time 10/17/2026 at 2:30 PM
Lot description modified on 10/02/2026 at 10:00 AM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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