La Galerie Cotignac Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Expressionist oil crayon on board portrait of a clown. The work is signed and dated top right. A wonderful strong and colourful portrait. The subject is looking out at us with his s...

Pencil study portrait drawing of a child painting at an easel by French artist Charles-Jean Agard. The work is signed bottom left and presented in a carved wood and gilt frame with mount under glass. A very charming pencil study of a child sitting at an easel. Agard has beautifully captured the head and face in full, with the light and shade, the rest of the body and surroundings are in sketch form, the contrast between the two making for a very successful composition beautifully capturing the intensity of the sitter. Charles Agard...

A late 20th Century watercolour and pastel drawing of machines in a landscape by British artist Paul Chambers. The painting is signed bottom right and carries an exhibition label for...

A French art deco pastel portrait by Louis-Jean Beaupuy. The work is signed and dated bottom right. Presented in carved and gilded wood frame. Beaupuy has captured all the charm and...

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...

A set of three framed watercolour and gouache studies on handmade paper applied to Vélin d'Arches of tribal objects by French artist La Roche Laffi...

Late 19th century drawing on paper of a French marine scene by noted French artist Georges Ricard-Cordingley. Carrying the atelier stamp to the bottom left and with full annotation and certification to the back of the paper. Provenance: This drawing came from the estate of the artist's daughter who had acquired it directly from her father. It is from his earliest period of drawing when his talents were first being recognised. A charming drawing capturing the scene of a paquebot, a small passenger ship, leaving the dock at Boulogne sur Mer. Cordingley has captured the majesty of the scene, the rolling waves, the force of nature. Georges Ricard was born on January 30, 1873 in Lyon, son of Prosper Louis Ricard and Georgina Marie Cordingley. He spent part of his childhood in Lyon and Boulogne-sur-Mer. He displayed early gifts for drawing. He lost his father in 1885. He began his training around 1887, becoming a pupil of Jean-Charles Cazin, a landscape painter from Pas-de-Calais and the Côte d'Opale. He then joined the School of Fine Arts in Lyon and remained there from 1888 to 1889. He moved to Paris in 1890, where he studied at the Académie Julian as a pupil of Benjamin Constant, Louis Martinet and Jules Lefebvre. He lost his mother around 1892, went to England to his maternal family and added his mother's name to his name. He embarked for the North Sea with the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen and carried out his first studies. In 1894, he met with great success at the court of Queen Victoria. He embarked a second time, in 1895, still for the North Sea and produced numerous studies of waves of clouds, of the port and of portraits of fishermen...

A fine 18th century French pastel portrait on paper of an aristocrat wearing the order of St Louis, inferring that the sitter had been in the military serving the King. The pastel is unsigned but to the the back is a piece of the original backing paper with a notation to the Baronne de Minck. The paper has been backed with a type of vellum, It is presented in a plain gilt wood frame on a period stretcher under 18th century glass. The artist has used the pastel to create a wonderful soft velvety texture so characteristic of this medium which became so popular for portraits in the 18th century. A charming rendition of a typical 18th century nobleman...

19th Century French Academy drawing of a classical maiden, signed Xavier Rendeley bottom right, numbered and dated 2nd April 1883. Presented in ...

18th Century French Sanguine drawing, possibly a preparatory sketch for the painting by Nattier after the painting by Rubens. Presented in shaped 'marie-louise' mount in plain gold wood frame with collection label. The subject is the Queen Marie de' Medici seated on a grand throne, the baby is in the arms of Health while Justice looks over him. Fecundity brings a cornucopia of fruit with the heads of the other children the Queen will bear. The Sun rides his chariot across the sky to indicate that Louis XIII was born in the morning and the calm figure of France surveys the whole scene. An engraving exists (see the Wellcome Collection) of this same image: 'The birth of King Louis XIII', after the engraving by B. Audran the younger after the painting by Jean-Marc Nattier after the oil painting of Peter Paul Rubens in the Louvre 'La Naissance du Dauphin (future Louis XIII) à Fontainebleau, le 27 septembre 1601'. Jean-Marc Nattier (17 March 1685 – 7 November 1766) was a French painter. He was born in Paris, the second son of Marc Nattier (1642–1705), a portrait painter, and of Marie Courtois (1655–1703), a miniaturist. He is noted for his portraits of the ladies of King Louis XV's court in classical mythological attire. He received his first instruction from his father, and from his uncle, the history painter Jean Jouvenet (1644–1717). He enrolled in the Royal Academy in 1703 and applied himself to copying pictures in the Luxembourg Palace, making a series of drawings of the Marie de Médici painting...

Late 18th Century French pastel portrait on paper of a young lady in period dress in a 'feigned oval'. In gilt wood frame presented under glass. Very much of its period and similar ...

French, Mid Century, pastel and crayon portrait of an elegant young lady by Gourdon. Signed and dated bottom left. Trade label to the back board. Presented in period deep 'tray' frame. This seems to be an early work by the artist and hence it carries his name rather than his later more distinctive signature 'Aslan'. Alain Gordon was one of two brothers, his sibling Michel also went on to achieve notable success with his distinctive 'comic' style. Alain Gourdon...