René Seyssaud (1867 - 1952) — The Sheep, Circa 1899

Sheep, circa 1899
Oil on panel, signed lower right
35.50 x 50.50 cm

Certificate of authenticity issued by Mrs. Claude-Jeanne Sury-Bonnici.

Seyssaud, the landscape painter of living forces

It was with the Avignon master Pierre Grivolas rather than at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, where he had studied under Dominique Magaud from the age of thirteen, that the young man's artistic personality emerged. While he drew inspiration from his Provençal roots, he nevertheless disengaged quite early on from the representation of local morals and customs favored by his master to anchor his work in the land itself. He would become a landscape painter. From 1885, he participated in the Salon des Indépendants and it was Le Barc de Boutteville who was the first to dedicate a private exhibition to him in its Parisian gallery in 1897. Two years later, Seyssaud enjoyed the favor of Ambroise Vollard and his particular hanging was a success with art lovers. An exhibition at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in 1901 crowned this Parisian trilogy. Seyssaud also began an ongoing collaboration with the cabinetmaker and decorator Eugène Printz. However, these forays into the capital's galleries were not to continue because Seyssaud remained loyal to François Honnorat, a Marseille merchant with whom he joined forces in order to permanently improve his material condition. With fragile lung health, the urban environment made the painter uncomfortable and it 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 Vaucluse. Living with her and her family in Villes-sur-Auzon (Vaucluse) and Saint-Chamas (Bouches-du-Rhône), he deepened his knowledge of the peasant condition, the calendar of field work, and its harshness. Seyssaud's work is attached to nature in its vastness and fullness: the earth, the sky, everything they support and cover, including man since he is also its fruit. In his peasant compositions, the strength of color echoes the forces at play, those of nature, of the seasons; men are one with the earth from which they draw the benefits they need through work. In February 2015, the first monograph of the artist was published, written by Claude-Jeanne Bonnici, responding to the expectations of a growing number of amateurs seduced by the power of this painting and eager for a study of this magnitude to finally be devoted to it.

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