27 - Roger de La Fresnaye (1885-1925) | French

Roger de La Fresnaye (1885-1925) | French Six Drawings: Landscapes and Portraits, 1920-1921 Ink on Paper Signed: Each sheet signed ‘La Fresnaye’ and dated ‘1920’, ’21’, ‘8/21’ or ‘4/21’ in the lower margin; one portrait inscribed with a name. Dimensions: Framed, glazed: 44 × 31.5 cm (17.3 × 12.4 in) (the landscape with cypresses and the church with horses); 46 × 33 cm (18.1 × 13 in) (the four sheets of portrait heads) Artwork: Six drawings in two frames, 44 × 31.5 cm (17.3 × 12.4 in) and 46 × 33 cm (18.1 × 13 in) with frames Provenance: Aletheia Subastas, Spain, sale 45, lot 327 (label on the reverse). Private Collection, Alicante, Spain. Condition: Pen and ink and crayon on paper, six sheets mounted and framed under glass in two gilt frames; the sheets lightly toned, the buff sheets with small spots; not examined out of the frames, and the technique is described as it appears through the glass. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- Six sheets in two gilt frames from the last years of Roger de La Fresnaye, when, his lungs ruined by the war, he had retired to Grasse with his friend the painter Jean-Louis Gampert and drew more than he painted. In the first frame two pen landscapes: a view over the hills and cypresses of Grasse with a couple in the foreground and a man resting on a rock, dated 1920, and a village church with horses at a trough and a farmer, dated 1921. In the second frame four heads: two in soft crayon on buff paper dated August and April 1921, a woman in profile and a young man full-face in an open collar, and two pen studies of pairs of men’s heads, one of them with the cubist faceting of the mouths and collars that La Fresnaye kept from his pre-war manner. The nervous, looping pen line, the heads built from a few curved strokes, the sudden geometry in a cheek or a collar, are the marks of the Grasse drawings, of which the Centre Pompidou and the Musée des Beaux-Arts du Mans hold the best-known examples; the portraits of Gampert and the sketches of friends and neighbours filled his sketchbooks in these years.