Gaston Sébire - Rouen Cathedral, 1946

Oil on canvas by Gaston Sébire depicting the west portal of Rouen Cathedral.

Signed and dated 1946 lower right.

Oil: 81 x 65 cm; frame: 95 x 79 cm.

Sébire began exhibiting around 1945 in Rouen galleries, then at the Galerie du Bac in Paris, in the exhibition "L'homme témoin" (The Witness Man) alongside Bernard Lorjou and Yvonne Mottet. This group advocated a return to realism against the trends of contemporary art, particularly abstract art. In 1949, the group was joined by Bernard Buffet and André Minaux, soon to found the Jeune Peinture (Young Painting) movement. Associated with the School of Paris and continuing a landscape painting tradition inherited from late 19th-century French painters, Gaston Sébire was appointed an official painter of the French Navy in 1973.

Sébire painted this canvas at the age of 26. We can see the influence of past masters such as Monet but also of painters from the Rouen School, particularly through the technique used, reminiscent of the textured facades of Pierre Dumont.