Gouache watercolor

Signed and dated lower right

Dimensions: 43 x 56 cm

With frame: 65.5 x 79.5 cm  

Iwan Cerf born in Belgium, where he began his pictorial practice. In Liège, he joined the Academy of Fine Arts. Since the art of the turn of the century is created and lives in the artistic capital of Europe; he settled in Paris in 1901. From then on, he studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, in the studio of Hippolyte Lefèbvre (sculptor and painter, 1863 - 1935) and Tony Robert-Fleury (history painter, 1837 - 1912).   

Once in Paris, the painter takes advantage of the dynamism of the city to undertake his career and mark his time. He exhibited at the Salon from 1924 to 1940, at the Salon d'Automne from 1922 to 1942 and at the Salon des Tuileries from 1927 to 1929. His paintings range from portraits, genre scenes, to landscapes and still lifes.  

From its landscapes, we retain the views of Provence and the mountain. Otherwise, he is inspired by the fantasies of the Middle East and the Far East: we know him as an "Arab Woman" (1921). Rather than an idealistic vision, he prefers warm tones that are faithful to his model, which he portrays with simplicity and accuracy.  

Iwan Cerf represents a young woman seated, from her left profile. He delicately paints the curve of his body. The painter pays attention to detail. Like a sculptor, he modulates light to give volume and life to his drawing. We could, on the one hand, think of the heritage of Gauguin, who freely painted the young women of the Marquesas Islands in the 1890s. Furthermore, we know that Iwan Cerf has a great visual culture. It is not impossible that he used the canon of the genre: the "Young naked man sitting by the sea", 1835-1836, by Hippolyte Flandrin, exhibited at the Louvre.