René Seyssaud (1867 - 1952) — Women On The Terrace, Circa 1925

Women on the terrace, circa 1925
Tempera on cardboard, signed lower right.
44 x 38 cm

Provenance:
Family of the artist
Private collection in the south of France

Certificate of authenticity issued by Claude Jeanne Sury-Bonnici.

Seyssaud,the landscape artist of living forces 

It was withthe Avignon master Pierre Grivolas, rather than at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts inMarseille, where he had studied under Dominique Magaud from the age ofthirteen, that the young man's artistic personality asserted itself. Althoughhe drew his inspiration from his Provençal roots, he soon disengaged himselffrom the depiction of local customs and mores favored by his teacher, anchoringhis work in the land itself. He became a landscape painter.As early as1885, he took part in the Salon des Indépendants, and it was Le Barc deBoutteville who was the first to devote a private exhibition to him in hisParis gallery in 1897. Two years later, Seyssaud was favored by AmbroiseVollard, and his special exhibition was a hit with art lovers. An exhibition atthe Bernheim-Jeune gallery in 1901 crowned this Paris trilogy.Seyssaudalso began an ongoing collaboration with cabinetmaker and decorator EugènePrintz. However, these forays into the capital's galleries were not tocontinue, as Seyssaud remained loyal to François Honnorat, a Marseillesmerchant with whom he joined forces to improve his material condition over thelong term.With hisfragile lung health, the urban environment made the painter uncomfortable, andit was as much by obligation as by choice that he settled in the countryside,on an isolated farm. There, he married a peasant woman from the Vaucluseregion. Living with her and her family in Villes-sur-Auzon (Vaucluse) andSaint-Chamas (Bouches-du-Rhône), he deepened his understanding of the peasantcondition, the calendar of fieldwork and its harshness.Seyssaud'swork is attached to nature in all its vastness and fullness: the earth, thesky, everything they support and cover, including man, since he is also thefruit of it. In his peasant compositions, the power of color echoes the forcesat work, those of nature and the seasons; people are at one with the earth,from which they draw the benefits they need through their work. In February2015, Claude-Jeanne Bonnici published the artist's first monograph, meeting theexpectations of a growing number of enthusiasts seduced by the power of thispainting and eager for a study of this scope to be devoted to it at last.

Discover more of this artist's works on the gallery's website: https://www.galeriepentcheff.fr/fr/peintre-rene-seyssaud#Oeuvres