La Tonquinoise - Portrait d'une jeune femme asiatique, oil on canvas circa 1950, signed "Morin

A presence both distant and familiar, conjured up from an operatic Oriental dream.

This singular painting, nicknamed La Tonquinoise, is an oil on canvas of harmonious dimensions (35.5 x 55.5 cm unframed, 54.5 x 72 cm framed), painted around 1950. The work offers us a portrait of an Asian-inspired young woman, seated in a pose of gentle abandon, holding what might be a fan or stylized accessory, against a vibrant, textured backdrop.
Her gaze, slightly tilted, seems to address an inner world. The features of her face are treated with finesse, almost in contrast to the background, teeming with mingled, superimposed, scratched and impastoed colors. The result is a highly expressive chromatic score, somewhere between figuration and poetic abstraction.
The canvas is signed top left, in a dense paste: "Morin", at least as it has traditionally been read, notably by the auctioneer at an early inventory. This could be one of those discreet but talented painters active in the 1950s, whose canvases were then to be found in the hushed shop windows of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the rue de Seine or the Katia Granoff gallery.
Artists without famous names, but whose hand could still capture the soul of faces and the memory of colors.
The original purchaser of this work, an enlightened amateur and faithful visitor to these galleries, made it one of the intimate jewels in his collection, before passing it on to his family with respect and a sense of beauty.
Our Tonquinoise would naturally find its place in a contemporary interior, set against a white or ecru wall, where its vibrant material would dialogue with sober furniture and light wood.
But it could also be perfectly at home in a more subdued environment - a wood-panelled living room, a library or a softly lit bedroom - like a face watching over the silence.
The period frame, in molded and painted wood, subtly accompanies the composition without weighing it down.

An object of contemplation as much as of memory, it will add a note of dreamy Orient, discreet and soulful.

Provenance :
French private collection, passed down through the family since the 1950s.
Traditionally called La Tonquinoise within the family

Ref: ROIEA83NMM