Antoine Chartres – Boats At The Quayside – Oil On Canvas – 20th Century – Signed

A good-sized oil on canvas depicting boats moored in a harbor in a winter atmosphere.
In the foreground, we see brightly colored fishing boats. In the background, merchant ships appear in the chimneys and antennas stand out against the leaden gray sky. The sea has green reflections. A city is sketched in the distance.
The brushstroke is quick, applied in flat tints.

The work is signed lower right. It is in excellent condition. The work is framed with a gray and gilded molded wooden strip, in good condition (some small dents in the gilding).

The artist
Antoine Chartres, whose real name is Antoine Louis Moiroud, was born in Lyon in 1903 into a family of artisans from the Dauphiné region. A student at the École nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon from 1919 to 1925, he won several prizes there before continuing his training at the Louvre, where he studied classical masters such as Veronese, Rembrandt, and Velázquez.

From the late 1920s, he exhibited in the great Parisian salons—Automne, Indépendants, Tuileries—and actively participated in Lyon's artistic life. In 1931, he joined the "Les Nouveaux" group alongside Marc Aynard, Henri Vieilly, and Jean Couty. During the war, he continued his work discreetly, painting landscapes and portraits imbued with interiority.

After 1945, he taught in Lyon, passing on to his students a taste for rigor and pictorial truth. Faithful to a demanding figuration, he keeps away from the abstract avant-gardes, favoring a sensitive and carnal expression.

During his lifetime, Chartres was respected in the artistic circles of Lyon and Paris, praised for the sincerity and power of his painting, but remains little known to the general public. Since the 2000s, his work has been rediscovered: retrospective exhibitions, catalog raisonné and monograph (La rage de peindre, Alain Vollerin, 2006) have highlighted the silent modernity of an artist faithful to the French figurative tradition.

Work visible at the gallery (07240)
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