Edmond Ceria, The Pont Neuf, Oil on Panel

Edmond Ceria (1884-1955)
The Pont Neuf
Oil on panel
Signed lower left
37 x 43.5 cm

Edmond Ceria (1884-1955)

From childhood, Edmond Ceria showed a predisposition for music, drawing, and painting. After studying at the Collège d’Évian, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva. Disappointed by the teaching, he went to Paris in 1904, enrolled at the Académie Julian, and frequented the Louvre Museum, where he discovered the work of Paul Cézanne, which profoundly affected him. He became a disciple of this new vision of the world, where sensitivity and a love of nature replaced genre and anecdote. According to René Barotte, “his incisive pages are reminiscent of Guardi or Canaletto. His style gradually freed itself from a certain rigor in execution.” The brushstroke becomes a sign, almost an ideogram, and the small painting appears written like a love poem.

He began his career by exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908, then at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d’Automne, of which he was a member. In 1919, he spent a year in Tuscany, which made him, like Corot, aware of the importance of light in painting. During this stay, he copied the great Italian masters, including Giotto, Uccello, and Masaccio. Upon returning to France, Ceria discovered the light of Provence, painting mainly in Marseille and Sanary.

In Paris, he set up a studio near the Observatory and frequently went down to the quays to paint the Seine, the bridges, the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries Gardens, and the Luxembourg Gardens. In 1934, he stopped traveling to Provence to discover Brittany, where he would spend many years. Indifferent to trends and steadfastly devoted to the nature he stylized, he pursued a career as a landscape painter whose light touches emphasized unexpected features and reflections. When the weather forced him to paint in his studio, he dedicated his talent to still lifes, which testified to his love of life, just as his landscapes reflected his appreciation for nature.

Ceria participated, along with his friends Charles Dufresne, Othon Friesz, and Henry de Waroquier, in the first exhibition of Masters of Independent Art at the Petit Palais in 1937. Still working alongside Dufresne, to whom he entrusted the artistic education of his son Jacques Despierre, he decorated the foyer of the Théâtre de Chaillot with The Ancient Theatre. The following year, he achieved recognition in the United States by winning the Carnegie Prize. Appointed an official painter of the French Navy in 1945, and thus freed from financial constraints, he continued his work, expressing his emotions until his death ten years later.

His works are held in numerous museums, including the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Musée des Années 30, the Musée Carnavalet, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.

Ref: DRWJ6PX83K