Skippings Fine Arts has dated this piece to the 1940s.
Perhaps the joy is represented by the dancing girls - or rather, their shadow - in the picture. On the face of the fiddler, however, the trauma of wartime appears present.
The painting is a work by the Surrealist Jean Lafon (b 1903) who has has been unfairly treated in art history. He is the namesake of another artist called Jean Lafon, a landscape painter (b. 1886) with whom he is often confounded.
"Our" Jean Lafon however has a very distinctive, poignant style, that was honed in the war years. His "Fall of Icarus" from 1944 is in the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art/Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Throughout the war, the Paris had remained active. One of the foremost galleries, the
Galerie Berri-Raspail where the present painting was purchased, showed exhibitions by contemporary French artists between 1941 and 1944. There, Jean Lafon showed his work alongside Modernists such as Leon Gischia, Jean Bazaine, Manessier, Fougeron and Pignon.
Lafon also exhibited at the Galerie Berthe Weill, dealer of the avant garde. Berthe Weill was the first to sell paintings by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse in Paris and organised the only solo exhibition of Amedeo Modigliani during his lifetime.
The work by Lafon presented here was acquired at the Galerie Berri-Raspail, and bears the gallery label on the verso. An oil on hardboard measuring 55 x 46 cm, the painting is signed at the lower right, titled "Farandole" (Dance) and dated 1 Mai 1945 on the verso. The overall framed size is 67 x 58 cm.
Skippings Fine Arts has dated this piece to the 1940s.
Modern french & continental pictures selected by a former french auction house expert
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The Fiddler and the Dancing Girls, 1 May 1945: Surrealist Modernist French Oil on Board
