"Miriam Rocher (born In 1875) - Canal De Magellan, Tierra Del Fuego, 1911-1912"
Miriam Rocher (born in 1875)Canal De Magellan, Terre De Feu, 1911-1912 Oil on canvas
33 x 55 cm
(40 x 61.5 cm with frame)
Signed lower left.
Titled and dated on the back
Born in Niort in 1875, Miriam Rocher was a student of the painter Alphonse Combe-Velluet. At the age of fourteen, she obtained the Deux-Sèvres and the city of Niort awards, which opened the doors to Paris for her, since she became a resident of the city for three years. During this period, she took classes at the Academy of Drawing. She frequents the studio of Puvis de Chavannes, the salon of Antonin Proust, and befriends Henri Martin - with whom she shares the same richness of nuances. However, she neglected the Parisian salons to which she preferred the Toulouse Artistic Union. On a personal level, she is married to a distinguished architect of the time, a member of the Archaeological Society of Midi de la France and a former professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, who contributed to the protection and the renovation of the region's historical and religious heritage. The pictorial production of Miriam Rocher can be divided into two ways. Her first period extends from her beginnings to the years 1903-1904, during which she notably made numerous portraits with a frank and delicate touch; then from 1904, his touch became more frank and vigorous, and his work more spontaneous. His landscapes are tinged with lyricism, while his portraits are more psychological. Stylistically close to Impressionism, his manner will gradually become akin to synthetism. By bringing patterns and lines back to their essential values, Miriam Rocher gives pride of place to color. A great colourist and luminist, she plays with oppositions between pure tones and the effects of contrast produced by shadow and light. A great traveler, she stays in North Africa, but also in Argentina and Mexico. The landscape paintings produced on site are sometimes bathed in light, which gives the works an impression of infinite calm. Conversely, they can sometimes be painted in deeper and more vigorous tones, giving the landscape a strange atmosphere. Thus, during her trip to Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, "she kept a few canvases restoring the very strange character and the grandiose picturesque" (L'Echo d'Alger 6 June 1928), of which our painting is. a perfect example.