Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Monsieur Noé Willer.

This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Monsieur Noé Willer.

Provenance
Purchased directly from the artist by the previous owner.


Jean-Gabriel Domergue, born in Bordeaux in 1889, was talented and precocious from a young age, exhibiting works at the 1906 Salon d'Artistes Français at the age of 17. In 1920 he was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome and then began showing outside the exhibition. In his early years he painted landscapes with great ease and it was for these which first gained recognition. In the 1920s however, his career took a decisive turn; Domergue devoted himself to painting portraits of Parisian ladies and would go on to paint over 3,000 images of this kind.

Domergue's woman was typically thin, airy, elegant, with a swanlike neck and wide seductive eyes which gaze upon the world with longing, characteristics which lead to him later claiming that 'I invented the pin-up.' Before long, his paintings of nudes and semi-nude coquettes became fantastically popular, and his aggressively modern style secured his reputation and his fortune. He is perhaps best known for his Cote d'Azur nudes which summed up the carefree abandonment of modern Cannes life, where he lived from 1927.

He was also a sought-after portraitist in aristocratic circles and could always be found at events in Paris, Cannes, Monte-Carlo, Juan-les-Pins, Biarritz and, of course, Deauville, quite possibly the location of the present lot. Domergue changed the way women were portrayed, breaking the traditional melancholic and vapourish poses; the female figure became airy, sparkling and effervescent. He had a talent for expressing the fickle and dazzling nature of a beautiful woman which can be seen in the composition of the present lot. The confident, bright lady in the foreground looks directly out at the audience and commands the scene when compared to the dark male figure behind her looking off to the right.

His style progressed throughout his career, reaching an almost definitive period at the beginning of the 1930s, which would mark the peak of his career. His paintings were no longer dated even though often titled on the back and sometimes numbered, as in the case of the present lot. He would go on to be curator of the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris starting from 1955 and it was during his organisation for the exhibit in honour of his own master, Giovanni Boldini, that he passed away in 1962.