Fauve Summer Harvest Scene,1928 Exhibited Bold French Landscape with Figures Oil on Canvas

A bold, beautiful and light flooded fauve landscape with figures by René Charles Thomsen (1897-1976).

Thomsen was the son of a sculptor close to the Docteur Gachet, van Gogh's champion and supporter. He studied with Louis Anquetin and Fernand Cormon at the Ecole

Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

Mobilised in WW1, René Thomsen drew and painted solders and scenes

from the front. In the late 1910s, he became friends with Jules Pascin and Modigliani, and along with his companion Chaim Soutine, he attended classes at the Academie Colarossi.

Our oil on canvas, painted in 1928, dates from a period when Thomsen"s career began to soar. In January 1927, the monthly "Art et Decoration" considered that Thomsen's View of Avignon by Thomsen was one of the best landscapes exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. Also in 1927, an exhibition of his watercolours was organised in the United States. That same year the French State bought a painting from him for the Luxembourg Museum.

Thomsen had one man shows at important Parisian galleries such as the Galerie Durand-Ruel, the Galerie Marcel Bernheim and the Galerie Dru from the late 1920s onwards. It is more than likely that our painting, with remains of exhibition labels on the stretcher, was shown in one of these exhibitions.

Works by Thomsen are today in the Collections of the French National Museum of Modern Art/the Pompidou Centre, in the Louvre, the Petit Palais and the Versailles Castle as well as in the museums of Bagnols sur Cèze, Le Havre, Rouen, Albi and Toulon.

Measuring 55 x 46 cm, the work presented here is signed and dated at the lower left. It is presented in a frame by Les Cadres RG - quite possibly the best framers in the world. The business was started in the late 19th century by Emile Gault, and by the mid 1930s, Picasso, Dali and Chagall could regularly be seen on RG’s premises to have their paintings framed. The overall framed size is 76 x 66 cm.

Nous parlons français, und wir sprechen auch Deutsch! Paintings may be viewed in Norwich and in Paris, as well as in London and Cambridge by appointment. Please contact us if you would like further details and images of an artwork.