Clovis Cazes Impressionist Landscape Painting Oil On Panel Circa 1900

Oil on canvas mounted on panel, framed and signed Clovis Cazes, circa 1900. It depicts a path probably in Catalonia (Spain) with lush, exotic vegetation. Beautiful light and whites in the Impressionist style. Clovis Cazes (1883-1918) was a painter born in Lannepax of Gascon origin. Coming from a modest family in the Gers region, he obtained a scholarship at the age of seventeen to study at the École supérieure des beaux-arts in Toulouse, before entering the École des beaux-arts in Paris in 1904. There, he studied under the prestigious Fernand Cormon, Carolus Duran, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Jean-Jacques Henner - each of these artists having achieved a certain notoriety in Parisian circles. He thus benefited from a relatively classical training oriented towards subjects of history, mythology, and portraits. He remained open to the modernity of the early 20th century, which was fully expressed in Paris, marked by the exploration of color and the avant-garde modification of the standards of pictorial representation. Appointed official painter of the Navy in 1914, his career was widely acclaimed by critics, as he received numerous awards during his training and in 1909 won a one-year scholarship to study in Italy, from which he brought back some works. He also frequented other artists from the Southwest, such as the Landes natives Alex Lizal and Jean-Roger Sourgen. During the First World War, he was quickly discharged for medical reasons and sent to Spain as an attaché at the consulate in Valencia. He remained there until his death from the Spanish flu in 1918. His work was influenced by the folkloric figures of Spain, of which he painted many portraits of Andalusian women. The Iberian character of these characters, like Goya's chimeras and souls brought to life in painting, does not obscure the diversity of subjects covered despite the brevity of his career. Clovis Cazes offers a strong painting of historical and mythological subjects, sometimes landscapes from European travels, featuring impasto and a false clumsiness of representation to develop a singular art, deeply pictorial and human.