Bernard BUFFET (1928-1999) Le clown chauve - 1966... Lot 465

Bernard BUFFET (1928-1999) Le clown chauve - 1966 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left Galerie David et Garnier Gallery stamp on back 65 x 54 cm Certificate from Galerie Maurice Garnier dated October 5, 2019 Provenance: - Galerie Emmanuel David et Maurice Garnier, Paris - Galerie Findlay, Chicago - Private collection from Florida - William Doyle Auction, New York, November 6, 2019 ($250,000) - Private collection Note: Bernard Buffet's clowns, a collector's dream... Bernard Buffet painted clowns throughout his career, producing some fifty works on this theme. Behind these poetic, colorful figures often lurks the painter's melancholy self-portrait. The figures wear different disguises and hairstyles from one painting to the next. Depending on the artist's style, some works depict several characters in the same scene. In addition to the absence of smiles, the eyes of the characters often evoke a deep melancholy, the accentuated wrinkles prove that the clown is elderly, while the sometimes elongated head of the circus character hollows out the cheeks and reinforces his sickly appearance. In all these pictures, the paradox is that the clowns are sad. Yet the clown is generally associated with joy and laughter. It's the make-up and costume that tell us it's a clown. Paintings of sad clowns contributed to the painter's popularity, in particular the famous Blue Clown of 1955, which has been reproduced many times and remains the painter's emblematic painting. The most expensive painting sold at auction features two musical clowns (sold for over €1.5 million plus expenses), and of the 18 most expensive watercolors sold at auction, 17 are clowns (the four most expensive sold for over €200,000).