Jules Oury, known as MARCEL-LENOIR 1872-1931 - Lot 104

Jules Oury, known as MARCEL-LENOIR 1872-1931 Woman with Child, 1916 Canvas signed and dated 65X 54 cm Authenticated by the Marcel-Lenoir Committee. Inclusion in the artist's catalog raisonné and monograph volume 3. "This large easel painting, titled Femme à l'enfant (Woman with Child), a rare gem brought back to life by the Collin du Bocage auction house, whom we thank, is an original work by Marcel-Lenoir. It was produced during the artist's third and final creative period, in 1920. It is signed twice and dated 1916 by Madeleine Marcel-Lenoir, the artist's wife. This completed painting also resonates with the watercolor sketch signed and dated by Marcel-Lenoir 1920, held by the Musée Marcel-Lenoir, photograph attached. The painting depicts a woman with child, the subject of maternity, and we recognize and identify the artist's wife Madeleine and their son Marcel. And the treatment differs between the study and the final painting, in terms of both gesture and workmanship. For his easel painting, Marcel-Lenoir set the scene with a cubist, geometrically faceted approach. In the foreground, we can make out the green grass and the immaculate white bench where Madeleine and their son Marcel are seated. In the background, a bluish river flows by, surrounded by a sandy beach. In the third and final shot, vegetation rises to the blue sky, caressed by a thick white cloud. Madeleine and Marcel take up a great deal of the composition's space, majestically dominating nature in a synthetic figuration. Madeleine also tenderly embraces her baby Marcel, born in 1919. And this profane maternity becomes, under the Master's mystical brush, elevated to the sacred, becoming a Virgin and Child. Madeleine, now a Madonna, Mary, performs the gesture of blessing and forgiveness, while Marcel, now L'Enfant Jésus, a chubby Raphaellian child, joins his hands in prayer. Madeleine turns her back to the viewer. We can, however, make out her head, her face with its bouncy, blushed cheek and her brown, braided hair, finished in a chignon. Madeleine is revealed as a generous, undulating, ingresque sculpture. She is dressed in an ochre tunic, revealing her neck, back, arms, ankles and feet. A dress that magnetically embraces her body. A veil-like fabric, stylized, structured and animated by a play of curved, oblique and straight lines. And Marcel-Lenoir adorns his favorite muse with a long golden shawl, like a rosary, embracing her body, twirling and even flying away, also traversed by a play of lines, in a particularly decorative ornament. From then on, this easel painting triumphantly signs Marcel-Lenoir's singular contribution to the history of Modern Art in the heart of Art Deco". Marie-Ange Namy