Skippings Fine Arts has dated this piece to the 1920s.
Certainly this Parisian working class child looks like determined, thoughtful and resolute. By the same token, one can just imagine her turn towards us with a kookie smile. Our drawing dates from circa 1915-17, so Yvonne must have been born around 1910/12.
The portrait is an unsigned work by Robert Ernest Noir (1864-1931), an artist who presents us with a very realist image of Paris in the first third of the 20th century, with its clochards, street urchins, prostitutes and madams.
Robert Noir was the nephew of journalist Victor Noir, who, as an anti royalist, was killed in 1870 by the Prince Pierre Bonaparte. A subversive streak seems to have run in the Noir family.
Rober Ernest Noir studied with Castellani, with Yvon, and finally with Ernest Hébert. He exhibited at the Paris Salon, as well as at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
A major one man show of his work has held in 1918 at the Galerie Devambez in Paris. Devambez - which had opened in ten years earlier with an exhibition of Rodin drawings - was showing Mary Cassatt, Armand Guillaumin, Monet, Renoir, Marquet, Signac, Raoul Dufy, de Vlaminck, Matisse, Braque Picasso, Modigliani, Foujita, and de Chirico at that time.
Posthumous retrospective exhibition of Ernest Robert Noir's work have been held at
Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (1981) and at the Museum of Vernon (1984-85).
Our very sensitively treated study of childhood innocence as drawn in graphite on paper. It
measures 40 x 32 cm and is presented in its original 1920s frame by Parisian framers E Adolphi, rue St Ferdinand. The overall framed size is 43 x 36 cm
Skippings Fine Arts has dated this piece to the 1920s.
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Childhood Innocence: The Resolute Parisian Girl Antique French Portrait of a Child Drawing
