Lot 87: LUCIEN LEVY-DHURMER (FRENCH, 1865-1953) LA BOURRASQUE (THE GUST OF WIND)

signed with initials oil on canvas 39 3/8 by 26 in. 100 by 66 cm. Painted circa 1896. Lucien Levy began his career as a lithographer and decorator and became a sporadic exhibitor at the Paris Salon. In 1895 he travelled to Italy, where he became interested in the Italian primitives. At the occasion of his first one-man show in Paris at Galerie Georges Petit, he adopted the name of Levy- Dhurmer, a contraction of his mother's name, Goldhurmer. His paintings and pastels, often bust length variations of the feminine figure with symbolic connotations, were executed in a style that involved academic precision and impressionist color harmonies. Sar Peladan invited the artist in vain to exhibit at the Rose + Croix salon, but Levy-Dhurmer found greater alliances with symbolist literati, with Georges Rodenbach in particular, and his work achieved great popularity despite his lack of group involvement. He was influenced by the style of Ferdinand Khnopff and the languid women and idealized figures of the Pre- Raphaelites. Levy-Dhurmer was known for his academic treatment of visionary subjects and portraits of symbolist luminaries; themes such as Silence, Salome and Medusa were subjects which fascinated him, as did the music of Debussy's L'Apres-Midi d'un Faun and Gabriel Faure's Roses of Isphahan. Levy-Dhurmer treated the subject La Bourrasque, related to the themes of the elements and the seasons, several times; another version of this subject won an Honorable Mention in the Salon des Artistes Francais in 1896, No. 1261 and was exhibited at the Galerie George Petit, Paris, No. 3. Exhibited: c.f. Paris, Grand Palais, Autour de Levy-Dhurmer: Visionnaires et Intimistes en 1900, 1973, No. 65 for a pastel sketch for the above picture, measuring 38 by 58 cm and No. 66 for a finished pastel measuring 40 by 48 cm. Literature: c.f. Robert L. Delevoy, Symbolists and Symbolism, Geneva, 1978, p. 126, for an illustration of the above mentioned oil painting depicting the head of this model.