7 - ‡ GEORGES HANNA SABBAGH (EGYPTIAN 1887-1951)

‡ GEORGES HANNA SABBAGH (EGYPTIAN 1887-1951) PORTRAIT D'AGNES HUMBERT studio stamped on the reverse oil on canvas 40.7 x 32.5cm unframed Property from a Private Collection, Dubai Provenance Sale, Millon, Salons du Trocadero, 16th May 2024, Lot 71 Purchased at the above sale by the present owner Georges Hanna Sabbagh was an Egyptian-born French visual artist of Syrian and Lebanese descent. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, he moved to Paris to study art, attending the Ecole du Louvre and learning under renowned masters like Paul Sérusier, Félix Vallotton, and Maurice Denis at the Académie Ranson. Sabbagh integrated avant-garde influences from the Nabis, Fauves, and Cubists to develop a unique style characterised by sculptural forms and profound psychological depth. In January 1916, Sabbagh married fellow artist and art historian Agnès Humbert. Together they had two sons, Jean and Pierre, and spent a significant portion of their creative lives working from their studio in Brittany. Sabbagh was highly regarded in the interwar Parisian art scene, receiving the prestigious Chevalier Legion D'honneur award in 1928. Following his divorce from Humbert in 1934, he returned to Egypt in 1936, where his artistic focus shifted toward Egyptian landscapes and themes before his death in Paris in 1951. Georges Hanna Sabbagh’s portraits of his first wife, Agnès Humbert, executed in varying compositions throughout their marriage, stand as masterful intersections of personal intimacy and Post-Impressionist modernist experimentation. Rather than capturing a mere physical likeness, Sabbagh’s portraiture prioritised the psychological and intellectual reality of his subjects. In his depictions of Humbert, Sabbagh uses a bold, structural approach heavily influenced by his exposure to Cubism and the robust, earth-toned textures of the Brittany landscape where they lived and worked. The compositions utilise deliberate, geometric modeling and a grave, muted color palette that echoes the solidity of granite. By opting for dense forms and structural weight over delicate romanticism, Sabbagh captures Humbert not just as a traditional muse, but as an intellectual peer, reflecting her own formidable presence as an art historian and independent thinker. His portraits remains a powerful testament to the "sacrificed generation" of interwar European modernists, beautifully blending the emotional gravity of a spouse with the avant-garde sensibilities of the School of Paris. The currently presented 1935 version occupies a deeply poignant and unique place in the artist’s body of work. Painted exactly one year after the couple’s bitter divorce in 1934, this work shifts dramatically away from the sweeping family portraits and large-scale canvases that defined their earlier years in Brittany. Executed during a turbulent transitional phase, just before Sabbagh closed his studio in Brittany and returned permanently to Egypt in 1936, the 1935 portrait functions as an intimate, retrospective study of his former wife and longtime artistic companion. Unlike his earlier depictions (such as La robe brune in 1931), the 1935 painting is a smaller, more focused rendering. Painted from memory or late studies following their legal separation, the work is stripped of domestic ornamentation, emphasising the profound distance, shared history, and mutual grief of a fractured partnership.