Marcel Roche "oyster Platter And Sea View"

Marcel Roche. Oil on plywood panel, "Oyster Platter and Sea View," signed lower right Marcel Roche. French School. 65 x 81 cm. Marcel Roche (1890-1959) studied at the Académie Julian and under Fernand Cormon (1845-1924) at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was a landscape painter, but especially a nude painter. He had a keen sense of composition. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne. From 1945 onward, he moved toward a profound plastic realism of the object. His constructed still lifes convey the authentic emotion of everyday life, and one critic remarked, regarding his submission to the 1952 Salon d'Automne, that he was embarking on a second career. Works by Marcel Roche have been acquired by the Musée du Luxembourg, as well as those in Le Havre, Rennes, Algiers, Oran, San Francisco, and Tokyo (sources: Bénézit Dictionary of Painters and Sculptors). Our painting is a perfect example of this second career undertaken by Marcel Roche starting in 1945. "Oyster Platter and Sea View," if it were a poem, would be an ode to generosity, a manifesto of communion, or even a profession of fraternal faith. Marcel Roche is a poet; he celebrates the new times when it is pleasant to live and drink together, just as Guillaume Apollinaire did in his time in his poem Vendémiaire: We will drink the new wine / We will eat plump oysters / And hearts as pure as a lamb / Hearts as pure as andrasse / Dear lovers, if you love oysters and good wine, please share your happiness. (Andrasse is a word that does not exist in any common lexicon; it is a hapax legomenon, a word used only once by an author.) Modern varnished wooden frame. Oil painting in good condition. 1200 euros.