An attractive portrait of a woman with a hat from 1911, a favourite subject of the painter. A work with light and bright colours influenced by impressionism.
Oil on canvas


Bears the date 1911 on the back


Dimensions: 72,5 x 54 cm


With frame: 96 x 77 cm
A luminous portrait of a woman by Charles Guérin, a favorite subject

Charles Guérin gives us here the portrait of an elegant hatted, gloved woman, carrying an umbrella, preparing to go out. The woman is young and attractive. Her pretty hat decorated with small fruits and the mahogany brown of her hair highlight her deep blue eyes. Her red lips on which the light catches attract the eye.
Charles Guérin, a talented colorist
Charles Guérin is a talented colorist. A characteristic that can be found throughout his work. In our painting, the light and bright colors, in a gradient of white and beige, are awakened by the red of the elegant woman's lips as well as by the mahogany brown of her hair and the handle of her umbrella. The few colored fruits on the hat, small spots of bright colors, brighten up the whole.
Biography
Son of a banker from Sens, Charles-François-Prosper Guérin is a post-impressionist painter.
He studied with Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He then became friends with Georges d'Espagnat.
He exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1896. He then became a member of the Société nationale des Beaux-Arts and exhibited there regularly. He exhibited ten paintings at the Salon d'Automne in 1904. In 1901 he became a member of the Independent Artists committee.
In 1913, he was one of the French painters exhibited in New York at the "Armory Show" and in 1914, participated in the exhibition of contemporary French art in Japan.
Also a color lithographer, he produces compositions in the style of XVIIIth century. He illustrated several bibliophile works, including “Les Fêtes galantes” by Paul Verlaine.
He was appointed officer of the Legion of Honor in 1932.
A professor of painting for almost twenty years at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, he ended his career as head of the painting workshop of the Grande Masse des beaux-arts from 1937 to 1939 at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts.

Bibliography
• Gérald Schurr “Dictionary of the Little Masters of Painting”, Les éditions de l’amateur
• Tristan Klingsor, Charles Guérin. Critical study, collection “New French painters” (no. 2), Paris, NRF-Gallimard, 1920.
• “Charles-François-Prosper Guérin” [archive], extract from the notice in the Bénézit dictionary Paid access, on Oxford Art Online, 201


Museums
• In Paris:
. Musée d'Orsay: Nude of a young woman, circa 1906.

. Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris

. Centre Pompidou: Portrait of Charles-Louis Philippe,

• In the provinces:
. Beauvais, Oise Museum: Two elegant women.

. Roubaix, La Piscine: The Reader.

. Sens, municipal museum: Narcissus, 1896.

. Poitier, The Lady with the Bracelets

. Pau, naked at the candlestick

. Toulon, seated naked woman.

• Internationally:
. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum: Naked Woman with Hat, 1907; Shchukin Collection