Lot 405: Eugène Robert Pougheon (1886-1955)

Eugène Robert Pougheon (1886-1955)
Amazones
signed and dated 'Robert Pougheon 1929' (lower right)
oil on canvas
53 7/8 x 35½ in. (137 x 90.2 cm.)
Painted in 1929

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Eugène Robert Pougheon was born in Paris in 1886 and studied at both the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs, winning a silver medal at the Paris Salon in 1927 and a gold medal two years later in 1929, the year the present work was painted. Pougheon was closely associated throughout his life with the artists of the Bordeaux school - Jean Dupas, René Buthaud, Jean Gabriel Domergue, Raphael Delorme, Jean Despujols and Alfred Janniot - who came to be synonymous with the Art Deco movement after Dupas exhibited his masterpiece Les perruches at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.

In 1914 Pougheon won the Prix de Rome and it was during his subsequent stay in Italy that his work became more stylized and geometric, his nudes achieving a post-cubist sculptural monumentality akin to that of Tamara de Lempicka. While Lempicka's powerful women are often characterized by decorative references to technological advances of the era however, Pougheon's Amazones are more rooted in classical antecedents. Like Dupas' women, Pougheon's Amazones are at the cutting edge of the Art Deco movement, their solidity and monumentality providing a firm contrast to the movement and transience of the natural world surrounding them.