Sotheby's, New York. A surprising bid for a very good work by Anquetin who moved in 1882 to Paris from Normandy. He studied painting with Cormon whose students included Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Vincent Van Gogh. Anquetin established a reputation as a brilliant, innovatory artist and was the leader of a café-cabaret circle centered on Aristide Bruant's «Le Mirliton» in Montmartre. Anquetin consulted Monet about Impressionism in 1886 before rejecting all naturalist styles to produce Cloisonism by the summer of 1887. His subject-matter included townscapes, café-cabaret scenes, nudes, the racecourse and fashionable women. He absorbed and discarded with equal speed styles derived from Lautrec and Renoir. Cloisonism involved a simplification influenced by Japanese prints toward an emphasis of line and color and Anquetin, who is not always so well-rated, took on the task of becoming the painter of his period through depicting purely Parisian subjects.
Home
