Henri Pontoy (1888-1968) Moroccan Odalisque

Oil on canvas painting signed Henri PONTOY orientalist composition circa 1930 depicting an odalisque lying in a Moroccan interior at tea time, exotic wood frame carved with a star pattern. Very good general condition, dimensions: 62.5 cm X 51 cm / a view: 51.5 cm X 40 cm Henri Pontoy (1888-1968) visited Morocco in 1914 where he decided to settle, devoting to this country the most important part of his work, multiplying exhibitions, decorative paintings and signing for magazines, publications, tourist documents, etc ..., hundreds of drawings, engravings, red chalk and illustrations. He regularly participates in Parisian Salons (French Artists, Autumn, National) and North African. Born in 1888 in Reims, he comes from a family of musicians, he learned the violin very early on. Not resisting the call from Paris, he settled there. His talent as a violinist allows him to train in painting by day, and to play in restaurants at night. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he learned the techniques of engraving under the guidance of Professor Luc-Olivier Merson, a Rome Prize famous for the allegorical, historical and biblical subjects he painted on the paintings. Pontoy also attended the Barbizon School, specializing in objective landscape, by renowned painters such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet. The painting in the open air, as it is conceived by the landscape painters of the School of Barbizon, will then condition de Pontoy. In Paris, the interested party exhibits his work at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne. In 1924, the Colonial Society of French Artists granted him a grant to visit Tunisia. The painter stays in Tunis and Algiers which disappoints him. He then decides to visit Morocco. He is "packed" by Fez, as he confides in an interview published in the newspaper La Vigie Marocaine, on the occasion of an exhibition in Venice. On the recommendation of an English diplomat, who bought him half of his workshop, Henry Pontoy became a workshop adjoining the Bou Jelloud mosque, where Jean Gaston Mantel would live a few years later. Henry Pontoy was then appointed professor of drawing at the Moulay Idriss college where he taught for 14 years, while exhibiting regularly at the Derche gallery in Casablanca. He resigned in 1940 "to stand on his own feet". More than Fez, it is Goulmime, Ouarzazate, Zagora and other sites in the South which foams the artist's palette. "What gives southern Morocco its charm and its picturesque nature are the kasbahs and ksours that are not found in Algeria or Tunisia," he admits. In 1947, Jacques Majorelle offers Henry Pontoy to accompany him to Guinea. Together, they travel through the heavily wooded region of Fouta-Djalon. "Majorelle painted nudes and I painted landscapes." Henry Pontoy favors open-air painting in a realistic approach, while seeking to express moods. In his paintings, he renders, with peaceful poetry, the melted shadows, the clear values, all that fiery light of the South that he manages to sift without cheating with its brilliance. Henry Pontoy lived in Morocco from 1927 to 1965, when he left this country to settle in Aix-en-Provence