Eugène Antoine Durenne

EUGÈNE ANTOINE DURENNE (Paris, 1860- Dourgne, France, 1944).
"Still life".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
With slight damage to the frame.
Measurements: 60 x 73 cm; 82 x 93 cm (frame).

This still life of Eugène Antoine Durenne, realized in the maturity of his post-impressionist production, reveals with clarity the stylistic constants that marked his work: a contrasted chromatism, a serene composition but constructed with precision, and a synthetic brushstroke that aspires to essentialize the forms.

On a table stripped of ornaments, the artist arranges a group of fruits (apples, pears and lemons) whose presence is imposed by their chromatic vibration more than by their tactile volume. The choice of colors is not arbitrary: each fruit has been placed with an almost musical logic, looking for resonances between the bright tones that enhance each other and dialogue with the background. This background, divided between the red of the curtain and a white wall that acts as a neutral field, establishes a chromatic tension that frames the still life with balance and strength.

Eugène Antoine Durenne was a French painter belonging to the post-Impressionist movement. He was the cousin of the art founder Antoine Durenne and the engineer Jean-François Durenne, mayor of Courbevoie. Trained in law, he became a parliamentary assistant stenographer and then reviser, but for pleasure, he decided to follow the painting and drawing courses at the Académie Julian between 1887 and 1888, where he coincided with Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, being a student of Jules Lefebvre, Gustave Boulanger, Jean-André Rixens and Gustave Courtois. In the following years, he also attended the Colarossi courses, where he befriended Albert André, Georges d'Espagnat and Louis Valtat. He left his parliamentary post in 1895 to devote himself to a career as a painter. He shared the workshop of George-Daniel de Monfreid.

During his lifetime, his works were exhibited, first by Le Barc de Boutteville (Paris), then by the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel, thanks to the mediation of Camille Pissarro. Durenne settled in 1901 in Saint-Pierre-du-Vauvray and, from 1918, in Endoûme, near Marseille. In 1933, he moved to Nice and was the victim of an accident that left him paralyzed. He took refuge in Dourgne, in an abbey, and died on January 26, 1944.

Several of his paintings are owned by the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, the Petit Palais in Geneva and other museums in France and Europe.