Edgar Maxence

EDGAR MAXENCE (Nantes, 1871 - 1954).
"Portrait of a lady", c. 1923.
Oil on panel.
It has a frame of the eighteenth century.
Signed and dated in the middle right area.
Measurements: 30 x 23 cm; 34 x 28 cm (frame).
Portrait of lady of great instantaneity where the young protagonist has been captured through elegant and subtle glazes of wide but effective touches as it is well appreciated in the hair. The young woman is turned slightly in three quarters allowing to create a sense of volume despite the neutrality of the background. The luminous palette used by the artist not only configures a scene of great clarity, but also provides certain psychological values to the protagonist, who appears with great innocence before the viewer as if she were in the transition between childhood and maturity.

Edgar Maxence was a French symbolist painter. He was taught by Elie Delaunay and Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is a contemporary of Henri Evenepoel, Jules Flandrin, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Léon Printemps, Georges Rouault and other eminent pupils of this famous school. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1894 to 1939, and was active on the Salon's committees and juries. Maxence combined a highly trained technique with a taste for medieval and mythical subjects and hermetic imagery; he exhibited at the Salon de la Rose + Croix from 1895 to 1897. In 1920 he painted the image of Our Lady on the vaulted ceiling of the choir in the Basilica of the Rosary in Lourdes. He also illustrated the book Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc (1945) by Jean-Joseph-Léonce Villepelet (Bishop of Nantes 1936-1966).