Lucien LÉVY-DHURMER (1865-1953) Nocturne, 1896... Lot 39

Lucien LÉVY-DHURMER (1865-1953) Nocturne, 1896 Pastel on paper Signed and dated towards right 48 x 42 cm Provenance: Lilian Nassau, New York (before 1966) Exhibitions: - Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 1896, no. 9 - Paris, Société de pastellistes français, 1897, no. 80 (?) - Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, "Symbolism in Europe", November 14, 1975 - January 11 1976, no. 95, reproduced p. 110 (Travelling exhibition : Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, January-March 1976; Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, March-May 1976; Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, May-July 1976). Palais, May-July 1976) (label on back) - Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Célébration en bleu, May-June 1979, reproduced - Tokyo, Musée d'Art Isetan, "Terres d'inspiration des peintres de Pont-Aven, Nabis et Symbolistes", April 2 - 14 April 1987, no. 120 (repr. p. 107 of exhibition catalog) (Travelling exhibition: Niigata, City Art Museum, April 18 - May 17, 1987; Osaka, Daimaru Museum, May 20 - June 8 June 1987; Shizuoka, Prefectural Museum of Art, June 13 - July 19, 1987; Himeji, City Museum of Art, July 25 - August 23, 1987; YTamanashi, Prefectural Museum of Art, August 27 - September 27, 1987) Bibliography: - Gabriel Mourey, "A dream painter L. Lévy-Dhurmer", The Studio, vol 10, no. 47, February 15, 1897, p. 11, repr. p. 9. - Achille Segard, "Lévy-Dhurmer. Reproduction des principales oeuvres du maître", Revue illustrée, vol. 29, 15 December 1899, repr., NP. - Elodie Le Beller, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, portraitiste et illustrateur de Georges Rodenbach, master's thesis master, UFR Rennes 2, 2017, vol. II, p. 69, repr. (ill. 13) We would like to thank Mr. Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond for his help and the information he kindly provided. provided. Drawing on the writings of Julia Kristeva, Catherine Millet recalls a few optical laws. Even before light is made, blue is the first color we distinguish. are perceptible in the dark. The perception of blue is due to the peripheral elements of the retina (rods), while the central part (cones) fixes the image of the object. object. The central part of the retina is the latest to form in humans (around sixteen months after birth). birth), so blue is perceived in children before they are able to identify objects. Lévy-Dhurmer began his career as an ornamentalist in Golf-Juan with Massier, whose Art Nouveau ceramics Art Nouveau ceramics are avant-garde in both their naturalistic forms and colors. In "La Renaissance païenne", published in 1898, Léon Thévenin emphasized Lévy-Dhurmer's predilection for the "seductions of the night and its vaporous tenderness" and for "those diffuse glows which reflect the sheets of water under the limpid infinity of evening" and explains it as follows: "it is the nocturnal side of the soul that he still opens to our dream: a restless world of fearful thoughts..., an occult universe where all light light is eclipsed, where all vision becomes a lure". And so it is with this pastel, where the twinkling of stars extends to the jewels adorning the evanescent hair of the young girl with downcast eyes. This fusion of the human figure and nature nature is further accentuated by the dark blue monochrome already seen in "Le Silence" and and favored by Osbert and Séon at the same time. (Source: Catherine Millet and Geneviève Lacambre)