CHARLES CAMOIN (1879-1965)

CHARLES CAMOIN (1879-1965) Bouquet of flowers on a table Oil on cardboard panel signed lower right. Provenance : Wally Findlay Galleries and Eric Couturier sale Dimensions : 56 x 39 cm A post-impressionist and fauvist painter of nudes, portraits, landscapes, seascapes and still lifes, he is also a watercolorist, pastelist and engraver. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and briefly joined Gustave Moreau's studio. It was there that he met Matisse, Marquet and Manguin, who were students at the same time as him and from whom he said he learned much more than from the master who died the same year. All four of them decided to leave the studio taken over by Cormon to join Camillo's free studio on rue de la Grande Chaumière. Like his friends, Camoin was already developing his palette towards lighter tones, influenced by the discovery of Impressionism. The first landscapes of Paris and the Ile de France date from this period and show a close relationship with Matisse and Marquet. Integrated into a regiment in Aix-en-Provence, he met Cézanne who was known for his difficult character. But Cézanne became friends with the young painter and regularly invited him to give him precious advice. After a trip to Italy and a great success in the Parisian galleries where he was at the top of the sales, including a painting bought by Signac, Camoin participated in Room VII of the Salon d'Automne in 1905 in the launch of Fauvism with Matisse, Marquet, Derain and Vlaminck. His landscapes, and in particular his views of Saint-Tropez, gave off a light characteristic of the Fauvist group. However, Camoin never jeopardized the cohesion of the painted image and rarely transposed his colors. Women also inspired him to paint particularly delicate and sensitive portraits, in which they appear pensive and distant. From 1908, his painting evolved in a more expressionist vein and he reintroduced black into his palette. Less attentive to detail and structure, the colorful writing gives increasing importance to the gesturality of the touch. Following his break with Charmy, Camoin joined Matisse in Tangier where he spent the winter season of 1912-1913 with his friend who gave him a renewed taste for work. He brought back from Morocco landscapes in which he renounced black to move towards a range of much softer colors and this evolution was confirmed on his return to France with views of Marseille, Cassis and Martigues painted in the same vein. After the war, Camoin married and began a new life, dividing his time between his studio in Montmartre and long stays in the south of France, especially in Saint-Tropez where he settled in 1921. He painted many views of the Gulf and its surroundings such as the Baie des Canoubiers, Le Favouillou, Les Vendanges, Ramatuelle between the pines, La Place des Lices, Les Joueurs de boules. At the end of his career, he found the culmination of a series of Bathers, which also constitutes his ultimate homage to Cézanne.