Lot 209: Portrait de Maria (la soeur de l'artiste)

Charles Angrand (1854-1926)
Portrait de Maria (la soeur de l'artiste)
signed and dated 'CH.ANGRAND - Avril.1882' (centre right)
oil on canvas
36 1/8 x 28¾ in. (91.8 x 73 cm.)
Painted in April 1882

Pontoise, Musée Tavet-Delacour, Charles Angrand, 1854-1926 , April - July 2006, no. 9 (illustrated p. 44).

Pierre Angrand, Paris.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Born in 1854 in Criquetot-sur-Ouville near Rouen, Charles Théophile Angrand had very conventional upbringing. His father was a school teacher and Angrand was destined to follow in his pedagogical footsteps. While working as a tutor at the lycée Corneille in Rouen in 1876, he also enrolled at the Académie de Peinture et de Dessin in Rouen under Gustave Morin and his ambition to be an artist solidified. He would later become a very close friend of Seurat's and would adopt his friend's pioneering pointillist style. However Portrait de Maria painted in April 1882 predated his move to Paris in October of that year. Its ambitious format, confident application of solid blocks of pure colour, and flattened perspective belie the comparative youth of the artist. This affectionate and honest rendering of his older sister Maria, to whom he was very close, was painted during an extended period of convalescence, dating from 19 October 1881, which he spent at his parents' home.