Maurice Esmein
View of a garden, circa 1910
Oil on canvas
Signed lower left
Countersigned and titled on the back of the canvas
Size: 65 x 76cm
Price: €18,000
French artist born in Paris, he is the nephew of the painter Julien Le Blant. Self-taught artist, Maurice is known in the history of the little masters for having contributed to the cubist adventure. He frequented Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and George Braque at the Bateau Lavoir. He studied medicine at the same time as he painted.
Friend of the painter Jean Buhot, he favors my painting over a medical career. He worked in Belgium and Holland, took up a studio in Montmartre in 1912, exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1914. The painter dies in the war, following his enlistment as an auxiliary doctor. His career was dazzling and brilliant. A rave review is made of his art after his premature death.
Maurice Esmein is initiated into the cubism of the masters; he gets down to analytical cubism. From his restrained chromatic palette, he paints the impression of the city through the prism of bursting and recomposition. The painter introduces us to the painting through an element of academic art, the foil figure.
The trees frame the side pendants of the painting, forcing the viewer’s gaze to move towards the center of the canvas. In the middle of it, trees, again. The painter uses pictorial tradition and departs from it to capture his subject: the landscape of modern life.
