Code: 7007
Dimensions:
A very beautiful French naïf oil on canvas landscape depicting Gérons en Vallée de l'Epte, by Jean Eve. The work depicts a harvest landscape with farmers and bales of hay in the Seine-et-Oise department of Northern France.
The work comes with superb provenance bearing two labels from the Stephen Silagy Galleries, Beverley Hills, USA. There is another New York gallery label which is partially missing.
Jean Eve was one of the "first wave" of 20th century French naïf painters and this fine landscape is a superb example of his work. He is featured in Anatole Jakovsky's ''Peintres Naïfs'' which is considered the bible of 20th century French naïf painters.
Presented in a fine gilded wood frame, signed lower right and inscribed with location on the reverse. An important example of French naïf art.
Artist: Jean Eve (French, 1900-1968)
Title: Gérons en Vallée de l'Epte
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 28.5 x 35 inches (72cm x 90cm) including the frame
Jean Eve comes from a family of miners; however, he wanted to escape from this landscape of slag-heaps and left home. He became a surveyor, draughtsman, customs-house officer - but most important of all, he was an artist.
He was lucky enough to participate as a very young man in the first exhibition to promote the primitives and since then he lived for his art. He worked regularly, especially in Normandy, near Giverny (Monet country).
His technique developed steadily, except for the short diversion of his 'Venice' period, to the extent that one sometimes wonders whether he can still be called 'naive'.
But he certainly is a naive painter, in fact a very, very fine one - for him, the craft of painting is used, fundamentally, to express his sensitivity to, and love for nature.
Source: Anatole Jakovsky - ''Peintres Naïfs''
