Raymond THIBESART (Bar sur Aube 1874 - 1968)

The millstones, 1912 Pastel 22.5 x 30.5 cm Signed, localized and dated lower left Thibesart Vaux 12 Raymond Thibesart is a French painter associated with the Post-Impressionist movement, whose style is often described as gentle and delicate. Born into a wealthy family, he showed an aptitude for drawing from an early age, and began studying with Venezuelan Impressionist painter Emile Boggio at the age of eleven. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1894, then the Académie Julian, where he was inspired by Impressionist and Pointillist paintings and from which several founding artists of the Nabis movement emerged. In 1897, Raymond Thibesart was awarded a medal by the Société des Artistes Français, and went on to exhibit regularly at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants. It was at the turn of the 20th century, and in particular following his trip to Italy with Emile Boggio, that Raymond Thibesart turned increasingly to Post-Impressionism. The latter captured the landscapes he traveled through with all the spontaneity of working on motif and color, as in Switzerland, Belgium, Corsica and elsewhere. Raymond Thibesart developed a very personal pictorial language, from which we shall retain a masterful use of light and color, capturing the changing effects of the sun on landscapes, trees, flowers, haystacks and so on. His works reflect a meticulous observation of the atmosphere that emanates from each element of nature. Thus, Thibesart finely depicts the cold light of winter or the vitality of springtime green. Endowed with great sensitivity, he manages to capture the ephemeral beauty that stands before him and transcribes it onto his canvas with poetry and serenity. In short, his landscape paintings are true odes to nature and light, inviting the viewer to contemplate and even reverie.