Jeune femme de la rue Lauriston, c. 1909-10
Oil on canvas, stamped lower right.
116 x 89 cm
Exhibitions :
Alfred Lombard, Galerie Stammegna, Marseille, 20 avril-7 mai 1999, illustrated on p.20.
Alfred Lombard, Couleur et intimité, Musée Regards de Provence, Marseille, 13 mars - 23 août 2015, illustrated on exhibition catalogue on p.49.
Bibliography :
Alfred Lombard, Giulia Pentcheff, Galerie Alexis Pentcheff, Marseille, 2019, illustrated on n°30, p.174.
An intimate painting by Alfred Lombard
From 1907 onwards, Alfred Lombard distinguished himself by a radical use of color and an experimental approach to the subject that in retrospect brought his research closer to Fauvism, inaugurated at the Salon d'Automne a few years earlier.
However, the role assigned to color did not go without coexisting with another tendency, which was about to accentuate in his evolution and draw him away from Fauvism and into the nets of a current that preceded it by a short distance. The decorative dimension began to emerge, a legacy of the Nabis.
The arabesque that characterized his first productions gradually resurfaced.
We must not forget that the Nabi movement and Fauvism, if they do not produce the same effects, are ultimately established on the same basis, that is to say a revolutionary desire to assert the independence of the painting from the subject, despising the material in favor of the line and color in an expression both raw and distanced, wishing to disavow impressionism.
Lombard was sensitive to this decorative vein from the beginning of his career, and in the years 1909-1910, it gradually took precedence over the research that linked him to the Fauves. Thus, the boldness and excitement of his youth gradually left the artist in favor of a more reasonable and rational execution, the advent of a traditional heritage in his painting. This date also coincides with Lombard's move to the Parisian studio on Rue Lauriston, which serves as the setting for this composition.
A young woman sits on the corner of a bed on the left side of the painting, while in the center, on a plain, smooth, framed light background, an imposing bouquet arranged in a vase blooms, itself placed on a piece of furniture that stands out from the ground in particular color.
What is the main subject of this painting? Still life or human figure?
Lombard seems to have difficulty choosing, or rather renouncing... as if he wanted to embrace all possibilities, to honor all his influences without betraying his convictions.
This series of works executed in the intimacy of the studio on the rue Lauriston is not without recalling, in certain aspects, the manner of Bonnard.
Shortly afterwards, he set about creating one of the most important paintings of his production, The Terrace on the Old Port (the final version of which is preserved at the MuMa in Le Havre), which gave rise to several studies, more or less completed, in which he pursued his decorative aspirations.