Eugène Carrière - Maternité (Tendresse) - image-1

Lot 653 Rα

Eugène Carrière - Maternité (Tendresse)

Auction 1013 - overview Cologne
25.05.2013, 11:30 - Modern Art May 25 2013
Estimate: 20.000 € - 25.000 €
Result: 24.400 € (incl. premium)

Eugène Carrière

Maternité (Tendresse)

Öl auf Leinwand, doubliert 61 x 50,2 cm

Rau Collection for UNICEF


The subjects of "Tendresse" or "Maternité" are leitmotifs in Eugène Carrière's oeuvre. On the one hand, the images were created in the immediate context of intimate family portraits; on the other hand, Carrière's art has also been subjected to a Symbolist interpretation - thoroughly specific to the epoch of the final years of the nineteenth century, which has been referred to as the "Fin de siècle". A depiction of the human condition itself was seen in Carrière's paintings or in the ostensible Non Finito of his friend Auguste Rodin: like a distant, ungraspable and existential murmur, like a schematic natural phenomenon that emerges and then disappears once more. The formal characteristics that were found to be similarly developed in the work of the painter and the sculptor motivated and supported this interpretation. The maternally protective gesture of the present example is touching in its concentration on depicting the enclosing of the child's fragile little head between the hands.

"In complete contrast to the genre-like, but cool 'Maternités' of Mary Cassatt, the colourfully cheerful versions by Auguste Renoir or even the idylls of the Swede Carl Larsson (whose origins, biography and choice of themes are, at first glance, very similar to those of Carrière), Carrière's 'Maternité' evokes the elementary and fundamental enigma of life, which, as it had already been interpreted by his contemporaries, could certainly also be pessimistic in tone. Gustave Geffroy thus wrote in 1892: 'Mais s'il fait rire les enfants et sourire les fillettes, l'artiste, supérieurement compréhensif, aggrave le visage des mères, aiguille leurs préoccupations vers la farouche inquiétude. Ce sont des lionnes attentives et soupçonneuses qui prévoient, qui redoutent, et qui grondent contre l'inconnu.'" (Anne Röver-Kann (ed.), Intimität der Gefühle, Eugène Carrière zum 100. Todestag, exhib. cat. Bremen 2006, p. 154; cf. also: Werner Hofmann, Bemerkungen zum Thema 'Maternité', ibid., pp. 112 ff.).

Certificate

We would like to thank Véronique Nora-Milin, Paris, for kind confirmatory information.

Provenance

Acquired Christie's London 1982

Literature

cf.: Gustave Geffroy, Le Salon du Champ de Mars, in: Revue d'aujourd'hui, no. 6, 15 May 1890, p. 323; Gustave Geffroy, La Vie artistique, 1re série, Paris 1892, p. 206; Frances Keyser, Eugène Carrière, in: The Studio, vol. 8, August 1896, p. 135 with illus.; Georges Denoinville, Eugène Carrière, in: Revue populaire des Beaux-Arts, no. 13, 1 April 1899, p. 196; Gustave Geffroy, L'Oeuvre d'Eugène Carrière, Paris 1902, p. 10 with illus. p. 2; Charles Morice, Eugène Carrière: l'homme et sa pensée, l'artiste et son oeuvre; essai de nomenclature des oeuvres principales, Paris 1906, p. 246; Gabriel Séailles, Eugène Carrière: essai de biographie psychologique, Paris 1911, no. 40; Anne-Marie Berryer, Eugène Carrière; sa vie, son oeuvre, sa philosophie, son enseignement; suivi du catalogue de ses peintures, mémoire de doctorat de l'université de Bruxelles, Liège 1935, no. 68; Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, Journal. Mémoires de la vie littéraire, vol. 3 (1887-1896), Paris 1989, p. 715 (information from the catalogue raisonné on 354)

Exhibitions

London 1982 (Christie's London), Impressionist and Modern Paintings and Sculpture, Part II, 29 June 1982, lot 303 ("Maternité", provenance there: "Adolphe Stein, Paris")