Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Beirut

Exhibited:
Claude Lemand Gallery, 1998, Paris
Janine Rubeiz Gallery, 1999, Beirut

Published:
Editions Clea, Shafic Abboud Monograph, Galerie Claude Lemand, 2006

Note:
The present work will be included in the artists catalogue raisonné with the reference ID909

"The light of my paintings is related to the light that I saw when I first opened my eyes in my village in Lebanon, Mhaidseh. The rhythm of that light can be found everywhere, and is reflected in all my works. The light of which I speak is to be found on Mount Lebanon. Through it, I see and I go, no matter how distant I may be."

Shafic Abboud, 1969

Une Après-midi à Poil de Loup (1996) is a radiant example of Shafic Abboud's late abstract style, created at a moment when his practice had reached a rare level of refinement and technical complexity. Painted the same year he purchased a house in Burgundy, the work reflects a period of renewal and introspection, expressed through a masterful orchestration of light, form, and memory.

The painting's surface shimmers with layered yellows, golds, greens, and soft pinks, unfolding into a loosely structured composition that feels both intimate and expansive. Like much of Abboud's work from the 1990s, it occupies a space between abstraction and figuration - deeply rooted in lived experience, yet transformed by the language of colour and gesture. This canvas is a standout among his late works, notable for its superlative brushwork and its saturated, almost musical palette.

The title - Une Après-midi à Poil de Loup - carries a double meaning, capturing both a literal and poetic association. "Poil de loup" refers to a specific type of paintbrush made from wolf's hair, evoking Abboud's studio and the act of painting itself. But it is also the name of a shrub in the garden of the artist's new home in Burgundy. The painting is thus a layered meditation on a particular afternoon: a play of tools and textures, place and process, memory and material.

Exhibited in Paris and Beirut, and included in major publications on Abboud's work, Une Après-midi à Poil de Loup is a key canvas from the final decade of his life - a period marked by both personal retreat and profound artistic clarity. Here, Abboud paints not just a moment or a memory, but the feel of an afternoon, refracted through the colours and forms of a landscape internalised.

This painting stands among the finest examples of Abboud's mature abstraction - lyrical, luminous, and unmistakably his own.