GALERIE MICHEL DESCOURS
France
10 rue de Louvois, 75002 Paris
Phone: +33 1 87 44 71 01
contact@galerie-descours.com
www.peintures-descours.fr
The opening of the painting and drawing gallery in December 2009 marked the culmination of thirty-five years of passion and experience. Long known as an antique dealer specialising in furniture and objets d’art, Michel Descours had the desire and ambition to create a space in Lyon devoted exclusively to what he considered to be the best in the field of fine art. If the gallery is a reference in terms of the Lyon school (Thomas Blanchet, Louis Cretey, Jacques Stella, Hippolyte and Paul Flandrin, Louis Janmot…), its interests go far beyond this production and encompass Italian primitives as well as 19th century Nordic painting and modern art.
Ten years later, in 2019, Michel Descours moved to Paris and opened a space at 10, rue de Louvois, in the 2nd arrondissement, in the heart of the artistic capital. This is now the address of the gallery, where he continues to present a taste and an eye for all schools, while still attaching great importance to the Lyon school.
The gallery regularly collaborates with museums and offers at least one exhibition each year (thematic, monographic or period). Since 2010 it publishes a catalogue every year.
Félix ZIEM
(Beaune, 1821 — Paris, 1911)
Self-portrait, circa 1850
Oil on mahogany panel
34.3 x 25.7 cm
“Ziem was then a slender, fair-haired young man with clear, dreamy eyes: long hair framed an aristocratic and gentle countenance reminiscent of a romantic page or a Polish musician. How well-suited he seems to appreciate the elegant forms of things, to love what gleams and shimmers! What would attract him was not the tawny and somber Orient, but the lively Orient, adorned with bright and sonorous hues.”
These few lines by critic and novelist Maurice Hamel, recorded in the columns of Les Arts shortly after the death of painter Félix Ziem, acutely describe the physiognomic singularity of the artist, masterfully transcribed in our vibrant self-portrait.
Born in Beaune to a Polish father of Armenian origin and a Burgundian mother, Ziem cultivated his cosmopolitan character and established himself as a traveling painter with an atypical career. Capturing the luminous and poetic variations of the landscapes of Venice, Constantinople, and Martigues, he followed in the tradition of Turner and Bonington, while pictorially prophesying Impressionism.
Through the broad, quickly brushed strokes for which he is known, Ziem here brings forth his own features from the panel, skillfully leaving visible the beautiful grain of the mahogany wood in reserve. He depicts himself face-on, dressed in a brilliant white shirt contrasting with his barely suggested black jacket, his left hand placed against his cheek, as if caught in reflection. The lateral light illuminating the face offers a powerful chiaroscuro that reveals Ziem’s complete allegiance to Rembrandt.
While other later self-portraits of the artist are known to be preserved at the Martigues museum, the painter’s physiognomy here is closer to those at the Dijon Fine Arts Museum, as well as to his portrait by his friend Gustave Ricard, exhibited at the Salon of 1850 and now preserved at the Petit Palais. Despite his triumphant debut at the Salon of 1849, Ziem had not yet reached the height of his fame, the same fame that would see him elicit praise in the following years from Théophile Gautier, the Goncourt brothers, and Huysmans.
Exceptional for its resolutely modern aesthetic, our self-portrait, among the first he painted, takes on the appearance of an aesthetic manifesto and already testifies to the high artistic ambitions of its creator.
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