FRANÇOISE LIVINEC

Located at 24 rue Penthièvre in Paris for nearly 10 years, the Françoise Livinec gallery opened a second space at number 30 in 2022 and participates in new art fairs such as the Salon du Dessin, in addition to major fairs like Art Paris and Asia Now. On the institutional side, the gallery is in charge this year of several loans and acquisitions in French institutions.

Aristide Maillol, a student of Gérôme and Cabanel at the School of Fine Arts, began his career in painting before becoming a renowned sculptor. He admired and copied Puvis de Chavannes, and his discovery of Gauguin at the Café Volpini exhibition in 1889 was also decisive in the development of his style.

In this work, Maillol offers another vision of the character in the pink dress of La Femme à l’ombrelle (Musée d’Orsay). The light and contrasting colors contribute to the feeling of harmony that emanates from the painting. The heterogeneity between the foreground and the background clearly indicates that the group of women was painted in the studio. It was added to an animated landscape, a witness to the joy of sea bathing and the development of maritime trade with the presence of a commercial vessel that could be propelled by steam and sail.

This double composition, a beach scene, anchors this work in modernity and enriches the reading of Aristide Maillol’s other masterpiece as a painter: La Femme à l’ombrelle.