Attributed to Claude Firmin

Attributed to CLAUDE FIRMIN (Avignon, France, 1864 - 1944).
"The duel".
Oil on panel.
Presents informative labels on the back.
It has faults in the frame.
Measurements: 22 x 28 cm; 48 x 53 cm (frame).
The portraits and scenes of musketeers were very popular among the bourgeois clientele of the XIX century, within a context still inherited from romanticism, that looked for in the idealized recreation of the own past a way of escape of the daily reality. Many painters of the time worked along these lines, seeking to capture scenes of the past with the greatest possible verism, recreated with precise attention to detail, worked with a language of academic roots or, as in the case of this panel, with a distinctly modern language, especially sensitive to light and atmosphere. This type of scenes starring musketeers are part of the genre of casacone painting, scenes worked with a special narrative and descriptive eagerness, which in Spain will have as main formal reference Velázquez and his contemporaries.
An outstanding Provençal painter from the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Claude Firmin worked both in easel painting and fresco, and among his decorative paintings those of the Hôtel de Ville in Avignon stand out. He was a member of the Group of Thirteen chaired by Clément Brun, and specialized in landscape and genre interiors. Today Claude Firmin is mainly represented in private collections.