Louis Anquetin

Franz Jourdain
Galerie des Deux Îles (Jacques Fouquet), Paris
Private Collection
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, 14th May 1998, lot 107
Galerie Brame et Lorenceau, Paris
Acquired by the present owner in 2001

Rouen, 32ème Exposition Municipale des Beaux-Arts, 1891, no. 304
Etrepagny, Hommage à Louis Anquetin, 1977

Émile Bernard, 'Louis Anquetin: artiste peintre', in Mercure de France, Paris, 1st November 1932, p. 597
Vincent Van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism (exhibition catalogue), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto & Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam, 1981, fig. 91, p. 248

The canvas is lined. There is a 15cm. line of retouching to the upper left quadrant, with an associated 7cm. line of retouching to its left, also running parallel to the left edge. There are two small lines of intermittent retouchings at the top left corner and bottom left edge. All retouching is visible under UV light. Apart from a small spot of retouching towards the centre of the top edge, and some light stable craquelure mainly to the red parasol, this work is in good condition. Colours: the parasol is paler and more pink in tone and the woman's dress is more subtle in the original. Overall the colours are slightly less strong in the original.
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Louis Anquetin arrived in Paris in 1882 and began studying art at Léon Bonnat's studio, where he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, before moving to the studio of Fernand Cormon and befriending Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. His striking appearance and artistic skill established Anquetin as one of the leading lights of the Parisian artistic and literary avant garde; 'he established a reputation as a brilliant, innovatory artist and leader of a café-cabaret circle centred on Aristide Bruant's Le Mirliton in Monmartre... His subject matter included townscapes, café-cabaret scenes, nudes, the racecourse and fashionable women: he absorbed and discarded with equal speed styles derived from Lautrec and Renoir' (John House & MaryAnn Stevens, Post-Impressionism, Cross-Currents in European Painting, London, 1979, p. 28).

During his frenetic career, Anquetin's work evolved through a range of different influences and styles, ranging from Degas to Japanese prints, and also the Impressionists. The present work, dating from 1891, belongs to the period in which, encouraged by Emile Bernard, Anquetin turned away from his brief experiment with neo-impressionism, and started to develop a painting style that used flat regions of colour and thick, black contour outlines. This new artistic style was an expression of many of the ideas being expounded by the literary symbolists, who frequented the same cafés and engaged in passionate debates with the artists of Anquetin's circle. 

Although his compatriot Émile Bernard later claimed that it was he who originated Cloisonnism, Anquetin was hailed as the leader of the new movement when he exhibited his works early in 1888, first with Les XX in Brussels and later in the Salons des Indépendents in Paris. His old school friend Edouard Dujardin created the moniker, and in the Revue Indépendante used his analysis of Anquetin's work to link this style to the symbolist movement; 'In painting as well as in literature the representation of nature is idle fancy... On the contrary, the aim of painting, of literature, is to give the sensation of things through means specific to painting and literature; what ought to be expressed is not the image by the character [of the model]. Therefore, why retrace the thousands of insignificant details the eye perceives. One should select the essential trait and reproduce it – or, even better, produce it. An outline is sufficient to represent a face. Scorning photography, the painter will set out to retain, with the smallest possible number of characteristic lines and colours, the intimate reality, the essence of the object he selects' (E. Dujardin, 'Le Cloisonnisme', in Revue Indépendante, Paris, 19^th May 1888).