Henri EPSTEIN (Lodz 1891 - Auschwitz 1944)

Port of Erbalunga, Cap Corse Circa 1926 Oil on canvas 50 x 73 cm Signed lower right "H.Epstein". On the back of the canvas, handwritten inscriptions "Collection Gustave Coquiot - Mauricia Gustave Coquiot" and the collection stamp "Gustave Coquiot Provenance: Former Mr. and Mrs. Gustave Coquiot Collection French writer, art critic and collector, Gustave Coquiot (Puit 1865 - Paris 1926) is an important personality of the literary and artistic world. He wrote numerous monographic works, notably on Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Bonnard, Van Gogh, Seurat, Renoir, Monticelli and Utrillo. Gustave Coquiot was the first to "discover" Henri Epstein; a strong friendship developed between the two men, and the art critic collected the painter's works. Renée Barbotte described a strong friendship between the two men: "The painter that Gustave Coquiot loved, the little Epstein who once worked in the happy atmosphere of this great writer in the Auvergne, inspired by the harsh life of the fields. In 1921, Henri Epstein illustrated Gustave Coquiot's book "Vagabondages" (Editions Ollendorf). In 1926, Henri Epstein painted this view of the port of Erbalunga, a charming coastal village on the Cap Corse, while he was staying on the Isle of Beauty for a summer. In 1929, the Parisian gallery Hodebert gave Henri Epstein a solo exhibition. Mrs. Mauricia Gustave Coquiot, who was widowed at the time, continued her husband's commitment to the painter Henri Epstein and on this occasion signed a note on his life and work. "Epstein made Corsica very real to me, with its warm atmosphere, a country so pure in its smallest things: trees, houses, men, animals, he transported me under the great olive trees where it is good to dream, not far from the tirelessly blue sea [...] He, the painter, captured in these great places the intimate union of beings and things, he fixed the fisherman against the boat, he made the red of the rough blouses of the men sing against the pink tones of the landed rays [....] Beings linked to things, things linked to the sky, intimate union of the stones of Erbalenga with the azure. This small village on the Corsican Cape did not reveal its secret to the painter who worked there for a whole summer. He would stay there for months and months and it would be, he says, a new festival every day. He knows the perpetual changes of this sky, of this light coloring things always differently; " "Artistic news", La liberté, May 30, 1929, p.2 René Barbotte, La vie artistique Henri Epstein, "L'Homme libre : journal quotidien du matin", 20 November 1931, p.1.