Brown Stone
View of the Seine, Épinay-sur-Seine, ca. 1911
Oil on canvas signed lower right
Dimensions: 40,5 x 60 cm
With frame: 56 x 76 cm
Price : 12 000 euros.
It is most certainly near his family home located “Rue du bord de l’eau” in Epinay- sur- Seine that Pierre Brune painted this youthful work. He describes its changing landscape and its fantastic colors.
Here, the water reflects the white light of the cloudy sky and the surrounding vegetation in a play of mirrors. The artist plays with the reflections in the Seine creating an almost abstract work in which one can get lost and doubt the back and the place.
The work is strong, vigorous, expressionist and modern. The unctuous and structured matter.
Pierre Boulaine, also known as Pierre Brune, was born in Epinay-sur-Seine and painted landscapes, still lifes and a few portraits.
Born into a family of the merchant bourgeoisie, he was destined to take up his father’s trade: commercial traveler and cloth merchant.
From the age of twenty, he traveled to the South of France, meeting the painters Lenoir and Lucien Andrieu.
A self-taught artist, he exhibited his work for the first time in 1910, on the advice of the circle of painters around him. On the eve of the First World War, he participated in the creative emulation of the Art Vivant group. In 1916, he moved to Céret. Encouraged by Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris who were resident there between 1911 and 1913, he created a museum of modern art and took the position of curator. He receives donations from Matisse, Chagall, Maillol, Manolo, Masson and many others.
He painted in Épinay-sur-Seine, Marseille, Montauban and Lyon in a rigorous style, then represented, from 1916, landscapes of Céret.
Bibliography:
. art. “Pierre Brune”, Bénézit, Oxford Art Online, 2011
Museums:
. Paris: Center Pompidou – National Museum of Modern Art, Modern Art Museum of the city of Céret
Exhibitions :
. Last exhibition: “Pierre Brune”, Museum of Modern Art of the city of Céret, Céret, December 3, 2016 – March 5, 2017.
