Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse – price record – Jacob Samuel – Biography

(31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist.known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.

Henri Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, and was raised in the small industrial town of Bohain-en-Vermandois in northern France. His family worked in the grain business. As a young man Matisse worked as a legal clerk and then studied for a law degree in Paris in 1887-89. Returning to a position in a law office in the town of Saint-Quentin, he began taking a drawing class in the mornings before he went to work.

When he was 21, Matisse began painting while recuperating from an illness, and his vocation as an artist was confirmed. In 1891 Matisse moved to Paris for artistic training.

He took instruction from famous, older artists at well-known schools such as the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts which required working from live models and copying the works of Old Masters, but Matisse was also exposed to the recent Post-Impressionist work of Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh while living in Paris.

Matisse began to show his work in large group exhibitions in Paris in the mid-1890s, including the traditional Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his work received some favorable attention.

Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.

 

Price records

“Cuckoos, blue and pink carpet”

Technique: Oil/canvas
Size 81 cm x 65.5 cm

Hammer price: $41,046,400

“The Odalisque, Harmony Blue” (1937)

Technique: Oil/canvas
Size 60.3 cm x 49.5 cm

Hammer price: $30,000,000

” Bouquet for July 14 ” (1919)

Technique: Oil/canvas
Size 116 cm x 89.0 cm

Hammer price: $25,500,000

“Portrait in Blue Coat” (1935)

Technique: Oil/canvas
Size: 91.3 cm x 59.8 cm

Hammer price: $20,000,000

“Dancer in the Chair, Checkerboard Floor” (1942)

Technique: Oil/canvas
Size: 46 cm x 55.0 cm

Hammer price: $19,419,680 

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres – price record – Jacob Samuel – Biography

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres – ( 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter.

Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres’s portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.

Ingres, was born in Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne, France, the first of seven children (five of whom survived infancy) of Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres (1755-1814) and his wife Anne Moulet (1758-1817). His father was a successful jack-of-all-trades in the arts, a painter of miniatures, sculptor, decorative stonemason, and amateur musician; his mother was the nearly illiterate daughter of a master wigmaker. From his father the young Ingres received early encouragement and instruction in drawing and music, and his first known drawing, a study after an antique cast, was made in 1789. Starting in 1786 he attended the local school, Ecole des Freres de l’Education Chretienne, but his education was disrupted by the turmoil of the French Revolution, and the closing of the school in 1791 marked the end of his conventional education. The deficiency of his schooling would always remain for him a source of insecurity.

In 1791, Joseph Ingres took his son to Toulouse, where the young Jean Auguste Dominique was enrolled in the Academie Royale de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture. There he studied under the sculptor Jean-Pierre Vigan, the landscape painter Jean Briant, and-most importantly-the painter Joseph Roques, who imparted to the young artist his veneration of Raphael. Ingres’s musical talent was further developed under the tutelage of the violinist Lejeune. From the ages of thirteen to sixteen he was second violinist in the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, and he would continue to play the violin as an avocation for the rest of his life.

Don Pedro of Toledo kissing the Sword of Henri IV (1820)

 

Technique: Oil/panel,
Size: 48 cm x 40.0 cm
Hammer price: $826,000

The Virgin with the Crown (1859)

Technique: Oil/panel
Size: 69.9 cm x 50.8 cm
Hammer price: $820,000

The Virgin with the Host (1860)

Technique: Oil/canvas
Size: 60 cm x 46.0 cm
Hammer price: $800,000

Aretino and the Envoy of Charles V (1848)

Technique: Oil/canvas
Size: 41.5 cm x 32.5 cm
Hammer price: $599,940

Study for “Sleeper”

 

Technique:Oil/panel
Size:22 cm x 36.5 cm
Hammer price: $482,720

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – price record – Jacob Samuel – Biography

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (July 17, 1796 – February 22, 1875) was a French landscape painter and print-maker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.

A pivotal figure in landscape painting, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot was an influential and prolific artist, producing over 3,000 works during his lifetime, and inspiring countless numbers of forgeries and copies. Although he was not especially interested or gifted in art at a young age, he decided to make the professional switch from businessman to artist at the age of 26, and in 1821, immediately began with the study of landscapes. He focused on two types of landscapes, historical landscapes, containing ancient and mythological creatures, and realistic landscapes, mostly of Northern Europe, with faithful renditions of flora and fauna, often mixing the two genres together.

In his travels through Italy to study Renaissance paintings, he was entranced by the light of the countryside, which was to influence his color palette throughout his paintings. Although he was also entranced by the Italian women, he wrote that his goal in life was to be committed to painting, and thus he had no time for marriage.

Jewish Algiers, the Italian

Technique: Oil/canvas

Size: 17 5/8 in x 14 3/4 in

Hammer price: $4,200,000

The Italian (c.1870)

Technique: Oil/canvas

Size: 28 3/4 in x 23 1/4 in

Hammer price: $2,600,000

Young Woman At The Fountain

Technique: Oil on canvas                                                                                                               Size: 25 5/8 in x 16 1/2 in                                                                                                           Hammer price: $2,041,620

Boatman from behind trees Shore

Technique: Oil/canvas                                                                                                                Size:39 3/8 in x 32 1/8 in                                                                                                               Hammer price: $1,850,000

Dreamer at the Fountain (c.1860-1870)

Technique: Oil/canvas

Size: 25 3/8 in x 17 3/8 in                                                                                                               Hammer price: $1,450,240

Pierre-Auguste Renoir price record – Jacob Samuel – Biography

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) An innovative artist, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on February 25, 1841, in Limoges, France. He started out as an apprentice to a porcelain painter and studied drawing in his free time. He was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Imperssionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that “Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau.”

Renoir’s paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated colour, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of colour, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.

Au Moulin de la Galette  (1876)

Size: 30 3/4 in x 44 7/8 in

Technique: Oil on Canavs

Hammer price: $71,000,000

Dans les roses (Madame Leon Clapisoon) (1882)

Size: Oil/canvas, 39 1/4 in x 32 in

Technique: Oil on canvas

Hammer price: $21,000,000

Baigneuse (1888)

Oil/canvas: 25 5/8 in x 21 1/2 in

Technique: Oil on canvas

Hammer price: $19,000,000

Jeune fille au chat

(No photo available)

 

Size: 38 3/4 in x 32 1/4 in

Technique: Oil on canvas

Hammer price: $16,500,000

La tasse de chocolat (c.1878)

Size: 39 3/8 in x 31 7/8 in

Technique: Oil on canvas

Hammer price: $16,398,690

Hilaire Germain Edgar De Gas price record – Jacob Samuel – Biography

Edgar Degas (full name: Hilaire Germain Edgar De Gas) was born in 19 July 1834. Degas is known for his painting of dance. Degas also created sculptures, prints, and drawings.Edgar Degas identified as the founder of impressionism, Degas how ever referred him self as realist.

 

In the beginning Edgar Degas was a history painter, he studied it in harsh academic training and classical art. Later he became a classical painter of the modern life. Degas lived long life. In the end of his life he painted less but promoted his work, Degas was also an art collector. In 1886, at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in Paris, Degas exhibited 10 paintings of nude women in various stages of bathing. These nude paintings were the talk of the exhibition and also the source of controversy; some called the women “ugly” while others praised the honesty of his depictions. Degas died in September 1917 in the age of 83, he never married.

 

Edgar Degas price record:

Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (c.1879/81)
Technique: Sculpture-Volume , Bronze
Size: 41 1/3 in
Hammer price: $16,870,460

Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (1922)
Technique: Sculpture-Volume , Bronze
Size: 38 5/8 in
Hammer price: $11,250,000

Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans (1879-1881)
Technique: Sculpture-Volume , Bronze
Size: 37 3/8 in
Hammer price: $10,800,000

Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (c.1879-1881)
Technique: Sculpture-Volume , Bronze
Size: 38 5/8 in
Hammer price: $10,460,100

Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (c.1879-1881)
Technique: Sculpture-Volume , Bronze
Size: 38 1/2 in
Hammer price: $9,200,000

Degas

Isaac Dobrinsky Biography- Jacob Samuel

Isaac Dobrinsky was born in 1891 in the city of Makarov, Ukraine. His father was a religiously observant Jew and he himself was brought up in a traditional way: he studied in a “Heder” (Jewish elementary school) and in a “Yashiva” (Jewish high school). He always found himself attracted to art. So he moved to Kiev in order to study sculpture after his father’s sudden death. 
Finally, after working as a model for terracotta sculptures, he started learning sculpting in a studio. He worked as a storekeeper in a factory during this period. In 1912, he won a prize for his sculpture which allowed him to move to Paris where he lived until his death in 1973. Upon his arrival in France, he became friends with the sculptor Marec Szwarc and the painter Chaim Soutine who helped him settle down in Paris and shared their studio with him. Dobrinsky suffered from a disease that makes him neglect sculpture in favor of painting a year after his arrival. His first painting was shown at the Salón de Independientes a few months later.

In 1914, he joined the French foreign legion, but he was soon released on medical discharge. Then he returned to Paris and attended the Colarossi Academy, where he met Vera Kremer (her father, Arkadi Kremer, was the founder of the Bund, the Jewish socialist party in Eastern Europe).

The two got married in 1926. In 1934, he moved to a larger studio in Montparnasse, and in the next few years he made his major breakthrough in the art scene during that period of time. These were happy days for the young couple, full with creativity and muse. But the Second World War had put an end to this harmony. In the first two years of the German occupation, Dobrinsky and his family stayed in Paris, but in 1942, in order to escape deportation, they fled to a small village called Dordogne. Only in 1944, after the liberation, Dobrinsky returned to Paris, just to find that the sculptures he had left behind were destroyed. In 1950, he was invited by Serge and Rachel Pludermacher (the founders of an orphan home) to paint the portraits of the children in their institute. In the course of two years, Dobrinsky worked on about forty portraits of young boys and girls.

Dobrinsky used to say: “I don’t wish to be successful, I just wish to understand the mystery of creation”. And indeed, those who knew Dobrinsky say that there was something almost religious in his act of painting: very intimate and somewhat melancholic. Even though he had a heart condition during his last years alive, he had never stopped painting, and always in the same manner. When he died at the age of 81, he was in a mid of a still life painting he had never finished.

Isaac Dobrinsky

Isaac Dobrinsky

Isaac Dobrinsky

Isaac Dobrinsky

Isaac Pailes Biography – Jacob Samuel

Palies was born in the city of Kiev in the Ukraine, to a family of goldsmiths. His grandfather on his mother side was a wood burner. When Pailes was thirteen years old he begun showing interest in printmaking and sculpturing. 

His early sculpture works were acquired by the museum of Kiev. In 1910, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev, where he met Isaac Rybak and Max Kaganovitch (both Jewish- Ukrainian artists) who will later become his art dealers for the next forty years. Pailes arrived at Paris in 1913, where he shared a room with Mane Katz (1894-1962) and studied sculpture in the Academy of Fine Arts of Paris. A year later, in 1914, he decided to go back to the Ukraine and Russia via London, Norway,Image Finland and Sweden.

When the Bolshevik revolution broke in Russia, he was sent to the front line in Crimea, but refused fighting. In exchange to a gold ring, he manages to get a ticket on a boat heading to Constantinople. In the following few years, Pailes is trying to come back to Paris and finally when he succeeds in doing so in 1919, his first stop in Paris is “La Rotonde” cafe. In the cafe he finds two of his friends Michel kikoine (1892-1968) and Isaac Dobrinsky (1891-1973), they welcomed him home and gave him clothes to wear.

In the first period of his resumed life in Paris, Pailes works as a model in order to support himself. In 1920, Pailes abandons sculpture and starts painting; also that year he becomes a collector of primitive art. During this period he kept a close relationship with the art lovers of his time: the commissioner Zamaron, the dealer Paquereau and Georges Berheim. Pailes was always very much attached to his Slavic origin- he participated in the activities of the Russian artists’ society, and he was the chairman of the Russian artists in Montparnasse. During War World II, Pailes settled in eastern Pyrenees and later in Auvergne. He joins a Belgium resistant group from Rochefort, called “Travail Obligatoire en Allemagne” (compulsory labor in Germany), and he stays in an attic for eleven months. When the day of liberation comes, Pailes returns to Montparnasse and continues with his painting. Only in 1948, Pailes paints his first abstract painting ever. His abstract paintings are perhaps the most interesting of his work. His maturity as an artist is well shown in these paintings, full with a rich texture and a colorful plate. Also expressing the pleasure he takes out of painting, having such a large number of painting.

Of all the painters, members of the “ Ecole de Paris”, he is the most unusual one, first his interesting biography, Pailes most certainly led an extraordinary life, second- the fact that he is not a proper painter, most of his career was actually in sculpture. And third, but most important- his painting are very unique, if we compare it to other member of “ Ecole de Paris”, his language in so individual- from the colors through his texture and to his themes. His work has no similarity to the work of any other painter in his times, he combines many of the artistic movements that was popular in his days- expressionism (shown in the massive texture of his painting), fauvism (the disharmonious colors and the diversity of it), Cubism (he describes figures as analyzed forms) and of- coarse Abstract painting.

Isaac Pailes

Jacques Chapiro Biography – Jacob Samuel

Jacques Chapiro. He was born in Dvinsk, Belarus. As a son of a wood sculptor, he began his artistic education at the early age of ten. In 1915, he entered the Krakow academy of fine art and in 1918 he moved Kiev to study in the Academy of Fine Arts. 
During the Russian Civil War, while pursuing his studies, he contributed to the revolution efforts by painting posters. In 1921, he studied art in Petrograd, and during this period he worked as a decorator in the Meyerhold Theater. He worked for Stanislavski and Vachtangov, both notorious in the field of theater.

In 1925, he left Russia in favor of Paris, and settled down in Montparnasse. He had exhibited his works in Les Independents Salon (the Independents’ Salon), the Tuileries, and other places as well since 1926. In 1939, he became a refugee, escaping to Carpentras and later on to Hautes-Alpes. When the war ended, he traveled to Italy before returning to Paris. When he returned to Paris, he set down to write his book of anecdotal stories taken from the life of the artists from La Rouch. He opposed the demolition of La Rouch in 1967 and he founded, along with Marc Chagall and Raymond Cogniat, a committee that fought against this move.

The committee succeeded in its cause. Chapiro’s works can be found in museums in the United States (Chicago), Russia (Moscow) and France (Jeu de Paume, Paris). As to his artistic style, it seems that Chapiro was fond of experiments. His many paintings are much different from one another; some are definitely Cubistic in style, some are Impressionist, while others are Fauvist.

We cannot say the same about his sketching. Throughout his artistic career, Chapiro sketches bore his unique signature, with a light and talented hand. It is his realistic sketching, which is somewhat casual, that one can be truly impressed by his talent.

Jacques Chapiro

Jacques Markiel Biography – Jacob Samuel

Jacques Markiel was born on July 20, 1911 in Lodz, Poland. As a young boy, his mother identified his artistic talent, and against his father’s will, she sent young Jacque to drawing lessons with the famous artist Isaac Brauner. 
Markiel, later in his life, graduated from the Fine Art Academy in Cracow. Soon afterwards, he received a merit scholarship and moved to the Belleville district of Paris in 1933. In Paris, Markiel’s talent was quickly identified and he earned his respect in the art field. He obtained third prize in the Ecole des Beaux Arts competition and was invited to study in the atelier of the respected painter Jean Souverbie.
When his Jewish identity was discovered in 1943, Markiel was sent to Drancy. In that same year, on June 23, he was deported on convoy no. 55 to Auschwitz. Markiel was forced to participate in the cruel death march to Gross Rosen, where he suffered much abuse. Luckily, he was one of the few who survived. During the holocaust, he was assigned to work in the coal mines at Jawischowitz, a subcamp of Auschwitz. During the war, Markiel figured out how to use his painting as a means of survival.

He painted a baker’s daughter and in return, she gave him bread when no one was looking. Markiel then smuggled the bread out of the camp and shared it with others. Suddenly aware of the power of his paintings, he drew a ten-year-old Hungarian Jewish boy, who also worked in the coalmine. The boy gave the picture to a Polish woman who, in return, supplied him with the food he needed to live.
After the liberation, Markiel returned to France, and sadly, discovered that his family had been exterminated in the war.
Supported by his wife, Esther, Markiel devoted the rest of his life to painting. After his death, some of his pieces were donated to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Jacques Markiel passed away in Paris in 2008.

Jacques Markie

Jacques Markie

Jacques Markie

Jacques Markie

 

 

 

Benn Rabinowicz Biography- Jacob Samuel

Benn Rabinowicz Born in Bialystok, Poland. His full name is Bension Rabinowicz. His grandfather was a Rabbi and his father was an architect. In 1917, he spent two years in Diatvolo at his father’s sister house, where he studied painting. As he returned to Bialystok, he set- up a workshop, where he worked between the years 1922-1924, during this time he decided to found a painting academy in his family house. Between the years 1926-1930 he worked as a theater decorator.

In 1927, he exhibited his first solo exhibition in his hometown. In 1928, he presented his work in the Salon in Warsaw. In the same year he participated in organizing the winter exhibition in Bialystok. In 1929, his hometown granted him a scholarship to study in Paris for three years. His future wife, Geurra, the one he will marry in 1938, was against this move. But eventually she joined him to Paris. In 1930, he attended the Fernand Leger modern Academy in Paris. He fell in love with Paris and decided to accept the French Nationality.

Benn was never a part of any specific artistic style. Based on geometric figures, his work always remained loyal to reality. During this time he managed to establish his reputation as one of the great modern painters of his time. In 1939, in the beginning of the Second World War, he became a refugee, moving from place to place. In spite of this difficult situation, he continued sending his works to the Fall Exhibitions in Paris. In 1941, Benn and his wife were sent to the transition camp (a concentration camp) in Beaune-La-Roland.

They managed to be released thanks to the intervention of the professors Marcel Brule and De Lo Duce. Under the protection of Jean Paulhen, they hide for twenty- six monthes, in Paulhen cellar. During this difficult time, they lived in fear of deportation. Back home, in Poland, Benn’s parents were massacred in a death camp. After the war ended, they came back to Paris and settled down for good. During the period after the war, Benn dealt with biblical themes, mostly in small formats.

This interest in biblical themes was very common among Jewish artists that survived the war and the holocaust. The holocaust caused many Jewish people question the existence of god, some became atheists, and some became stronger believers. One of his most notable works in this theme is the 126 illustrations of psalms that were presented in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Museum of Lyon and many other places.

 

Benn Rabinowic