Jean Peské
A fauve-colored painting by Jean Peské, circa 1905, depicting his little daughter in a flower garden. Acid colors and a post-Impressionist touch, typical of the artist, bring cheerfulness and vivacity to this work.
Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 46 x 38 cm
With frame: 49.5 x 41.5 cm.
Price: €13,000
“One day, I’d like to see my work succeed in moving the viewer as intensely as possible. The nobility of line and composition, the harmony and power of light, these are my ambitions”, Jean Peské in his memoirs.
Jean Peské with his family
Jean Peské loved to depict his wife and four children. He painted scenes of family happiness from the motif.
Here, the artist depicts his little daughter from behind, in a light dress and sun hat, walking out onto a terrace opening onto a sunny garden. The oval shape of the frame directs the viewer’s gaze to the center of the painting, emphasizing the subject.
The painter has captured the child in action. She turns away, revealing a three-quarter view of her face. The rich, flowering vegetation and the child’s light attire evoke spring.
Jean Peské, an Independent of the Paris School, committed to freedom of imagination and technique.
Unconcerned with contemporary movements (Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism), Jean Peské paints landscapes and animated scenes in a personal style inspired by the luminosity of the Impressionists, the liveliness of color of the Fauvists and the intimacy of the Nabis.
A thick, bold and sparse brushstroke; a harmonious palette of gleaming colors combining cool tones, greens and blues with warm tones, from pinks to purplish reds, through aniseed yellow and off-white, brings out the light.
Biography
Jan Mirosław Peszke, known as Jean Peské, is a painter and engraver of Polish origin on his father’s side and Russian on his mother’s. He studied at the Kiev School of Painting, then at the Odessa School of Fine Arts and the Warsaw School of Fine Arts. He studied at the Kiev School of Painting, then at the Odessa School of Fine Arts and the Warsaw School of Fine Arts. Having inherited his father’s estate in 1891, he emigrated to France the same year.
He enrolled at the Académie Julian in the studios of Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin -Constant. He met Sérusier, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, who taught him lithography, and Pissaro, who introduced him to etching.
Under Signac’s influence, he experimented with pointillism. Between 1895 and 1900, he also frequented the Nabis group, and exhibited at the “Le Parc de Boutteville” gallery with Serusier, Bonnard and Vuillard. From 1900 onwards, he found his place among the Post-Impressionists, painting en plein air, notably in Barbizon.
Peské exhibited regularly from 1895 onwards at the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon d’Automne, and subsequently in major galleries.
He worked in Collioure in 1902, in Brittany, and settled in Bornes-les-Mimosas from 1910 to 1915. In Collioure, he founded a museum, now the Musée d’Art Moderne. Appreciated by Mirbeau, Fénéon and Apollinaire, Peské was one of the most fiercely independent artists of the Paris School, fiercely committed to freedom of imagination and technique.
Peské achieved great renown between the 1920s and 1940s, and counted a number of wealthy collectors among his clients.
He presented his drawings to Georges Clémenceau, one of his admirers, and the Chalcographie du Louvre bought prints from him.
Bibliography
– Gérard Schurr, Pierre Cabane, Dictionnaire des petits maîtres de la peinture, 1820-1920,
– Bénézit, Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, tome VIII,
– Lise Bicart-Sée, Vie et œuvre de Jean Peské, Mémoire, Paris-Sorbonne, 1978. – Lise Bicart-Sée, Publication critique du journal de Jean Peské, Doctorat de 3e Cycle, Paris-Sorbonne, 1983. – Collectif, Jean Peské, 1870-1949, exhibition catalog, Somogy, 2002-2003. – Michel Guillemain, Jean Peské à Bormes, exhibition catalog, Réseau Lalan, 2005.
Museums
– Paris – Amiens – Bormes-les-Mimosas – Collioure – Fontenay-Le-Comte – Grenoble – Kremlin-Bicêtre – Les Lucs-sur-Bourgogne – Marseille – Melun – Morlaix – Nantes – Rennes – Rouen – Sens – Saint-Tropez – Vannes
Abroad
– USA
– Canada
– Israel
– Poland
– Russia
