Georges Bastard

Little Coutance, Geneva by Georges Bastard - Engraving 36x26 cm

1890

Work on paper

It represents the "Petit Saconnex" square in Geneva, including the "café du commerce" and the "café du soleil". The work is signed and framed by René Zwahlen, painter and watercolour...

Image dimensions: M-109655 cm. This splendid lithograph View of Geneve is part of the series of prints dedicated to views of the city of Geneva, engraved by the Italian artist Antonio Fontanesi. The state of preservation of the artwork is excellent. The signature is engraved on the plate the lower left. At the top of the paper, the inscription “Interieur de Geneve”, while at the bottom, below the image, the inscription “JMP Pilet & Cougnard Editeurs Geneve”. Antonio Fontanesi (Reggio Emilia, 1818 - Turin, 1882) was an Italian painter, engraver, teacher, and soldier. He was one of the most important 19th-century Italian painters, though somewhat unknown. After fighting in the I Independence War...

Etching on vélin Canson et Montgolfier paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Published by L'Imprimerie Daragnès, Paris; printed by Jean Gabriel Daragnès, Paris, July 14, 1937. Notes: From the folio, A La gloire à Paris, 1937. Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), The Glory of Paris. This dedicated album by the Paris municipality was written, illustrated, engraved and printed in the year MCMXXXVII. This album was decorated and printed by J.-G. Daragnes for the City of Paris. This album has been completed to print on Vélins des Manufactures de Canson et Montgolfier et des Papeteries on July 14, 1937, D examples, the first CC of which were reserved for the subscribers of the album. EDMOND CÉRIA (1879-1954) From his childhood, Edmond Ceria showed a predisposition for music, drawing and painting. After studying at the Évian college, he entered the Geneva School of Fine Arts. Disappointed by teaching, he went to Paris in 1904, entered the Académie Julian and attended the Louvre museum where he discovered the work of Paul Cézanne which shocked him. He becomes a disciple of this new vision of the world, where sensitivity and love of nature replace genre and anecdote. According to René Barotte, “its incisive pages are reminiscent of Guardi or Canaletto. His style gradually frees itself from a certain rigor in execution. The touch becomes a sign, almost an ideogram, and the small painting appears written like a love poem. He began his career by exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908, then at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d'Automne of which he was a member. In 1919, he spent a year in Tuscany which made him aware, like Corot, of the importance of light in painting. During this stay, he copied the great Italian masters including Giotto, Uccello, Masaccio. Back in France, Ceria discovered the light of Provence, painting mainly in Marseille and Sanary. In Paris, he set up in a workshop near the Observatory and frequently went down to the quays to paint the Seine, the bridges, the Concorde, the Tuileries and the Luxembourg. In 1934, he stopped his travels in Provence to discover Brittany where he spent many years. Indifferent to fashions and unfailingly attached to the nature that he stylizes, he pursues a landscape work whose light touches highlight the accidents or reflections. When the climate forced him to paint in the studio, he devoted his talent to still lifes, which testify to his love of life, just as his landscapes reflect his taste for nature. Ceria participated, with his friends Charles Dufresne, Othon Friesz and Henry de Waroquier, in the first exhibition of the Masters of Independent Art at the Petit Palais in 1937. Always alongside Dufresne, to whom he entrusted the artistic education of his son Jacques Despierre, he decorated the small foyer of the Chaillot theater with Le Théâtre...