Woman With A Coat (1914) - Fauvism - Drawing By Jos Albert (1886-1981)

Jos ALBERT (1886-1981). Woman with a Coat (1914), Ink and colored pencils on paper, signed in the lower right corner, mounted under a mat and wooden frame. Dimensions: Frame: 42 x 32.5 cm. Subject: 30 x 20.5 cm. It is interesting to note that this work is a preparatory study for the same portrait done in watercolor and sold at De Vuyst for 2,400 euros in 2023. After his studies at the Saint-Josse-ten Noode Academy, where he enrolled in 1903, Jos Albert experienced his beginnings from 1909 to 1918 marked by Impressionism and Fauvism. Interior of 1914 shows him influenced by the art of Rik Wouters: he was close at this time to the group of Brabant Fauves and participated in 1914 in the last Salon of Free Aesthetics in Brussels. He then experienced a period marked by Cubism, during which, without losing the reference to the subject, he focused on the construction of the image and darkened his palette (Still Life with Fish, 1922, Grenoble Museum). In 1923, he exhibited at the gal. the Centaur in Brussels but, after this date, he adopted a realistic style that he would never abandon. Painted meticulously, his subjects are taken from everyday life: still lifes, genre scenes (The Housewife, 1926, private collection, Brussels), where the Flemish tradition of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer resurfaces, landscapes that are in the tradition of Bruegel as well as 17th-century Dutch painting (Brabantian Landscape, 1929, Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent; Road to Grimbergen, 1944). Jos Albert is then, with all his personal nuances, the Belgian representative of Neue Sachlichkeit and Magic Realism. The last part of his career remains frankly traditional in the subjects illustrated and the style used. In 1977, a Homage to Jos Alberta was organized at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. The artist is mainly represented in Belgian museums.