Jean-roger Sourgen : “the Ocean Behind The Dune”

Jean-Roger Sourgen (1883-1978): "The Ocean Behind the Dune", oil on canvas 54 x 79 cm, mounted in a more recent green and gold frame 71 x 90 cm.
Painted around 1928/30.
The painter-poet of the Landes region, whose motto on the pediment of his house in Hossegor was "Dream, paint and hunt", offers us here a work characteristic of this region, revealing a glimpse of the ocean in the background, and whose texture leaves the canvas in reserve, outlining the impasto with subtle transitions of hues from blue to turquoise, passing through light pinks, and the blazes of the pines standing out against the dune, highlighted by heather and dead pines, making it one of his best paintings.
While he no longer needs an introduction, this wasn't always the case : I remember an extraordinary large-format pastel for which it took me several months to convince my clients that it was excellent and that they should pay me 1200 francs! It seems like only yesterday…
An emblematic painter of the Landes region, he depicted it with love and poetry throughout his life, a body of work interspersed with forays into the neighboring Basque Country and a trip to Morocco, but these subjects remain anecdotal amidst a constantly renewed vision of the Landes, whose best works from his early period can rival those of the Nabis painters.
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