Poules : Étude 1

Original pencil drawing, heightened with watercolour. Artist's signature stamp in the lower right corner of the work, and studio stamp signature on verso. Very fine condition. Provenance: from the artist's studio, referenced in the catalogue Atelier Louis Anquetin (Thierry de Maigret, 28/11/08). Louis Anquetin, born in Étrépagny in 1861 and died in Paris in 1932, was an important French painter. He began his career alongside avant-garde painters such as Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. With Émile Bernard, he invented Cloisonnism. From 1884 to 1893, Louis Anquetin continuously explored the new possibilities offered by the liberation introduced by Impressionism in French painting. From 1893 onwards, following a lengthy confrontation with the "masters of former times," he adopted a pictorial approach that would place him on the margins of the general art movement and distance him from his friends. Dazzled by Baroque art and its creative vigour, he then believed that his youthful friends had embarked on a path that would lead to the death of painting. He believed in a "perfect painting" embodied in the remembered lessons of Michelangelo and Rubens in particular. His work therefore became more classical; he advocated a return to craftsmanship, proposing to reflect on the a priori conditions of any possible form of art while respecting the rules of perspective and anatomy as practised by the masters of the 16th and 17th centuries. Leaving only a few works that can be described as monumental, Anquetin proved prolific through his numerous studies and sketches, he who considered drawing to be "an all-powerful means of expression," the necessary foundation of all plastic arts. By deliberately working against his era, Louis Anquetin made possible the existence of an original modern figuration. Through his obstinacy and passion for painting, he prevented the path of the great Western tradition from being completely blocked. His works can be admired in numerous prestigious museums such as the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre in Paris, in San Francisco and Detroit, at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, at the National Gallery and the Tate in London, etc.