Marcel Coucy (1885-1957), Portrait Of A Woman, Drawing

Marcel COUCY (1885-1957)
Portrait of a Woman
Pencil and colored pencils on card
Signed lower right
43 × 33 cm
Framed 50 x 40 cm

Born in Besançon in 1885, Marcel Louis Édouard Couci, known as Marcel Coucy, was a painter active in Montmartre at the beginning of the 20th century. He moved among the artists of the hill with the group of the “Château des brouillards” (Castle of Mists) as described by his friend, the writer Roland Dorgelès, in his 1932 novel.

When the Great War broke out, Marcel Coucy retreated to the Berry countryside. He settled in Gargilesse in 1915, a village in the Indre department located on the banks of the Creuse River, where his wife ran the Hôtel des Artistes (Artists' Hotel). There, he associated with other painters living in the region, such as Léon Detroy (1859-1955), a Berry native by adoption. The picturesque landscapes of the Creuse Valley, praised by George Sand in her novel *Promenades autour d'un village* (1857), attracted numerous landscape painters, including Claude Monet and Armand Guillaumin. The term "Crozant School" emerged in 1864 to designate these artists' colonies who stayed there until the mid-20th century.

A leading figure of the Crozant School, Marcel Coucy is primarily known for his verdant landscapes. He captured, with the changing seasons, the lyricism inherent in the rocks, waters, forests, and pastures of Berry. He painted a stark, unadorned nature in luminous, broadly applied brushstrokes. Besides the countryside, he was also drawn to Corsica and the Mediterranean ports.

During the interwar period, several solo exhibitions were dedicated to him in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, notably by the Galerie André (1928) and the Galerie Lucie Weill (1938).

Few portraits, and also few pencil drawings on paper by the artist, have survived to this day. The appearance of the model, with his very modern hairstyle, in our drawing suggests that it was created in the 1920s or 1930s.