The cook - Portrait of Aline 1940-41

Oil on canvas, titled and dated on the back.

Dimensions: 130 x 89 cm, with frame: 157 x 115 cm

Sitting on a wooden chair, the cook, Aline, wearing a turquoise apron over a navy blue dress matching the kitchen furniture, is peeling onions. His gesture is enhanced by the peeling net that escapes from his knife. 

We are in the kitchen among the pans and other utensils. 

Like a Madonna, her impassive face, haloed by suspended brass, Aline is busy with her mastered and customary task.

She turns away while continuing her work and seems to be looking at a spectator or posing as a model in front of the artist who paints her.

Roger Chastel painted Aline, in this kitchen with Provencal decoration,  during his stay in Cannes in 1940 in the free zone under the German occupation, where he made friends with Pierre Bonnard and met Matisse.

Student of Ranson Academy and JP Laurens.

In his work strongly influenced by cubism, he seeks the essential through synthesis and refinement.

He painted one of the panels of the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva near Vuillard, Roussel and M.Denis. 

He was a respected professor of the Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Has participated in numerous group and personal exhibitions;

He represents France at the Venice Biennale in 1952.