Marcel Gromaire
(French, 1892-1971)
Equisse pour carton de la tapisserie "l'Automne," 1940
oil on canvas
dated, titled, and bears the artist's signature stamp (on the reverse)
23 3/4 x 34 1/2 inches.
This lot is located in Chicago.

We thank Mrs. Françoise Chibret, director of the Galerie de la Présidence, for having confirmed the authenticity of the work.

This oil painting is a major study for an eventual tapestry, and is part of a series by Marcel Gromaire of paintings and tapestries depicting the four seasons. Between 1938 and 1944, the artist and Jean Lurçat virtually reinvented the European art of tapestry. Gromaire's first tapestry, La Terre (Earth) was executed in 1938. Later in 1938, Guillaume Jeanneau, the French publisher and writer (L'Art Cubiste, Paris, 1929), asked Gromaire and Lurçat to create a series of tapestries for France's tapestry center of Les Gobelins. These commissions were interrupted at the beginning of World War II. This resulted in many of the projected tapestries not being executed.

Later, in 1939, Jeanneau renewed his commission, but this time, in spite of the war, the tapestries were made in France's traditional tapestry-making cities of Aubusson and Felletin. In a letter of September 19, 1941, Gromaire wrote to the art critic Florent Fels:

"...Tapestry should not be considered as simply fabric to be hand-made, but rather as a great mural-art - as in the Middle Ages. In this sense, we again find the great classical tradition of the 14th and 15th centuries...The true significance of the purely technical aspect [of the creation of tapestries] again should be sought after. (The attempts of Dufy at Beauvais, consisting of decorative screens and chairs, were still only copies of paintings). Insofar as I'm concerned, over the last two years I have dedicated such a considerable amount of my work to tapestries that I have hardly had any time for painting, and then only to watercolors [and drawings and etching] for my [own] pleasure and research." (quoted in Marcel Gromaire, Musée d'Art Moderene de la Ville de Paris, 1980, p. 21)

Provenance:
The Artist
Thence by descent through the family
Galerie Sagot-Le Garrec, Paris
R.S. Johnson Fine Art, Chicago

Exhibited:
Chicago, R.S. Johnson Fine Art, Traditions and Reflections: A Selection of works from England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, Fall 2019, no. 16, pp. 40-41

Related literature:
François Gromaire and Françoise Chibret-Plaussu, Marcel Gromaire: La Vie et l'Œuvre, catalgue raisonné des peintures, Paris, no. 508 & 509

Framed