Jean Peské 1870-1949: Maternity Ink And Watercolor, Signed Lower Left

Jean Peské (Jean Mirosław Peszke) is a post-impressionist painter, engraver and illustrator of Russian-Polish origin, active mainly in France at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is best known for his luminous landscapes, trees, and Mediterranean scenes (Brittany, Vendée, Bormes-les-Mimosas, Collioure), as well as for his connections with the Parisian avant-garde. Born in 1870 in Golta (now in Ukraine), to a Polish father and a Russian mother. He trained at painting schools in kyiv, Odessa, and Warsaw before settling in Paris in 1891, after receiving an inheritance from his father. He entered the Académie Julian (studios of Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant) and quickly became part of the artistic and intellectual circles of the capital. He died in Le Mans in 1949, having achieved considerable renown during the interwar period. In Paris, Peské associated with Signac, Pissarro, Bonnard, Vuillard, Sérusier, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Nabis group. Under the influence of Signac and the Neo-Impressionists, he experimented with pointillism and the division of the brushstroke before returning to a freer and more tactile style of painting. He was also close to intellectual circles (for example, he was acquainted with Guillaume Apollinaire and met Marie Curie), which solidified his place in the Parisian bohemian scene of the late 19th century. He is associated with the Post-Impressionists, with a predilection for landscapes, and especially trees, which earned him the nickname "the forester of painting." He was particularly drawn to the light of the South of France (Bormes-les-Mimosas, Lavandou, Collioure), which he explored in oil, watercolor, engraving, and wash drawings enhanced with India ink—a highly personal technique. His works feature a light and colorful palette, with a constant interest in the vibration of light and a sensitive touch, sometimes almost tactile. Peské exhibited regularly from the 1890s onward at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne, and later in major galleries, which solidified his reputation between the 1920s and 1940s. In 1934, he founded an art museum in Collioure which is the origin of the current Museum of Modern Art in the city. Works by Peské are preserved in several institutions, notably the Musée d'Orsay, the Petit Palais in Geneva and in regional museums such as Bormes-les-Mimosas or local public collections (for example Montrouge). This work can be dated between 1902 and 1919, when his wife, the sculptress Catherine Louchnikoff, depicted in this painting, gave birth to their four children;.