Paul-Elie GERNEZ (1888-1948) [FRANCE] - Lot 11

Paul-Elie GERNEZ (1888-1948) [FRANCE] Chemin en automne, 1918 Oil on cardboard mounted on parquet panel. Signed and dated lower right. 80 x 64 cm Provenance -Artist's family -Private collection Gernez's pictorial development began modestly. In 1911, he took a job as a drawing teacher at Honfleur College, a position he held for more than a decade. In 1914, he met Félix Valloton, a regular visitor to Normandy. Normandy, and whose Villa Beaulieu (Equemauville) on the heights of Honfleur has been his summer residence since 1909. In the circle of artists and intellectuals who frequented the Villa, Gernez met the art dealer Gaston Bernheim, poet Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, journalist and art critic Louis Vauxelles. In 1917, he met Maurice Denis in Brittany and exhibited that same year at the Galerie Druet, where he was regularly re-exhibited. In 1920, a major personal retrospective was organized at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris; Maurice Denis wrote the preface to the catalogue*. Although not revolutionary, Gernez's art shows a fine assimilation of various pictorial innovations: Impressionism, the art of the Nabis, Fauvism associated from 1918 with Cézanne cubism. With its synthesis of drawing and form, and its high colors, "Chemin en automne" is a magnificent testimony to this bold eclecticism: here, a solar "flash" dazzles the center of the composition and gilds the foliage, a crimson puddle of autumn foliage floods the ground and contrasts with soft greens; trunks and branches seem blackened by the solar fire. * The biographical details are largely taken from the Paul- Elie Gernez-Musée de Paris exhibition catalog. Elie Gernez-Musée Eugène Boudin- Honfleur-2018