38 - Lucie Cousturier

Lucie Cousturier (Paris, 1876 – Paris, 1925) Lavandière dans le golfe de Saint-Tropez Circa 1908 Oil on canvas Signed lower center 74 × 92 cm A painter, art critic, and essayist, Lucie Cousturier ardently championed Neo-Impressionism in France and Belgium. The southern French landscape depicted here, enlivened by a woman washing laundry, is unique in her body of work. It demonstrates her complete mastery of the Divisionist technique as conceived by her mentor Paul Signac and their friends Henri-Edmond Cross and Théo Van Rysselberghe, alongside whom she regularly exhibited her paintings in Paris and Brussels. Painting in the Midi with Cross, Signac, and Van Rysselberghe In a letter that Paul Signac sent to Henri Manguin on September 19, 1905, the painter recounts Cross’s visit to his villa, La Hune, in Saint-Tropez. While Cross was working, Lucie Cousturier was daydreaming. Indeed, during her solo exhibition at the Druet Gallery in Paris in 1907, Lucie Cousturier displayed only two views of the South of France among the 39 paintings presented. Across her entire body of work, experts count no more than thirty Mediterranean landscapes. The one presented here is all the more exceptional because it features a picturesque scene unlike any other in the artist’s body of work. In 1923, the Giroux Gallery organized a joint exhibition for her with Paul Signac. Provenance - Private collection, Paris