Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

A French drawing and watercolour portrait of a Breton Girl by Renée Béja noted pupil of Fernand leger. The work is signed on the right margin and presented in a gilt frame with a fine cut card mount. A wonderful character portrait of a girl in traditional Breton costume and head dress. Beja has completed a pencil drawing and then used washes, watercolour and gouache to give the composition life. Lifelike flesh tones and the blue of the subjects eyes give the whole a charming intimacy. Renée Anne Béja was a French painter and theatre decorator of Greek origin born in Thessaloniki (Ottoman Empire, today in Greece) on July 4, 1905 Renée Béja was still a young child when the family moved to Solliès-Pont in France, where her father worked as a flour miller at the Crédit Agricole. In the 1930s, Renée Béja was a pupil of Fernand Léger. Between 1935 and 1938, she exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries, presenting mainly Views of the Périgord, she also participated in 1938 in the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants. During the Second World War, Renée Béja, her husband and some of her family were saved by being hidden by Eugène Viès, executive of the SNCF in Solliès-Pont, the industrialist Étienne Arnaud and the secretary of the town hall registering them under a false name on the register of inhabitants, so as to entitle them to food tickets. A Gestapo raid, however, meant that the Béja family had to leave Solliès-Pont for Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, always with the help of Eugène Viès and his wife Walda, to whom the Yad Vashem Institute has since awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Based at 41, rue Blomet in Paris, Renée Béja then also worked as a decorator for the theatre. She created the sets, costumes and masks for the play Les Choéphores by Aeschylus, performed in the great amphitheatre of the Sorbonne in June 1949, then at the Palais des Papes as part of the Avignon Festival in July 1950. The works of René Béjà, including portraits, nudes, still lifes, landscapes of Provence, Brittany and Paris, were presented at the Salon du Gemmail in Tours, stylistically, as with her colleague Andrée Bordeaux-Le Pecq, post-cubist and abstract experiments, but also classifying it, with Germaine Lacaze, Marguerite Bermond, Geneviève Gavrel and Guillemette Morand...

Original drawing certified by Madame Annie Guedras . black ink on paper from 1930-1932 . dedicated to Germaine Krull (photographer ) . signed Jean Cocteau and with the star .

Diego Rivera 1886-1957 Mexican Niño Signed and dated “Diego Rivera 1935” (lower left) Charcoal and sanguine on rice paper A rebel against the traditional school of painting, Diego Rivera is revered as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. Niño, completed by Rivera in 1935, represents a masterwork within an important part of the artist’s output — his portraits of children. It is a touching work paying homage to both childhood innocence and the cultural identity of the Mexican people...

" patineur sur glace ", "Ice Skater " is an original drawing by Jean COCTEAU . India ink and graphite on tracing paper . this drawing was executed in 1931 during a stay in Toulon ( s...

Presenting an original large pen and ink drawing by Hungarian/American artist Karoly Fulop. "Bell Ringers", is an original pen and ink d...

A number of years ago, we acquired the balance of a Northern California estate of artist Thelma Terrell. Terrell lived in Oakland and was an illustator and commercial graphic artist. This male...