Hubert-Denis ETCHEVERRY - Lot 84

Hubert-Denis ETCHEVERRY (Bayonne 1867-1952) The roses oil on cardboard 27 x 21 cm signed 'D. Etcheverry' lower left A student of Achille Zo at the École de Dessin de Bayonne from 1879, Denis Etcheverry took the competitive examination for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris nine years later, finishing first and becoming a pupil of Léon Bonnat. From 1895 onwards, he sent his work to the Salon des artistes français, where he won several medals. Initially devoted to religious painting, then to genre scenes, it was in 1903, with the success of his painting Vertige, that he acquired the status of worldly painter. Like Paul-César Helleu at the same time, Etcheverry became a fashionable portraitist, appreciated by the women of the world. The bouquet of flowers we present here, with its clean lines, bold colors and delineated brushstrokes, is in the vein of the Art Deco movement, which was flourishing in the 1920s. At this time, our artist seemed to be rediscovering the subjects he had painted in his youth, as Jean Valmy-Baisse so aptly points out in his book on the artist: "he drew with care and painted with even more care his first pictures of flowers and still lifes [...]", subjects that are also to be found in the works he exhibited at the Salon during this period, notably in his Femme assise au bouquet de roses (1926), an image that made the front page of the newspaper L'Illustration that same year. Bibliography : Valmy-Baisse Jean, Denis-Hubert Etcheverry, sa vie, son œuvre, Paris, Société d'édition & de publications librairie F. Juven, 1910. L'Illustration, no. 4340, May 8, 1926, 84th year.