Bather with flowers

Everything is softness, harmony, beauty and tranquility in this pastel-colored work by Jacqueline Marval. The oval shape, synonymous with femininity, underlines the grace of the canvas.

Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 99 x 80 cm

“One of the most remarkable artists of our time.” Guillaume Apollinaire, the intransigent, February 25, 1912

Jacqueline Marval, known for her female nudes.

A naked redheaded woman; an evanescent and slender bather mingles with the delicate flowers of a fruit tree in a landscape near a lake. Two doves, beautiful immaculate birds symbolizing purity, love and beauty are perched at her feet.
Although the scene is dreamlike, we can situate it in the Pays Voironnais (Isère) in the Chartreuse Regional Natural Park, the artist's region of origin.

Jacqueline Marval delivers here a work of great tranquility, a dream of gentleness and harmony.

The tranquility of the lake, the softness of the colours, the velvety flowers cascading from the fruit tree, the ethereal whiteness of the woman, the mist of the sky and the oval shape of the canvas transport us into a world of beauty, grace and harmony.

This painting is representative of Jacqueline Marval's talent, freedom and desire to embark on the adventure of painting without influences or constraints.

Biography

Jacqueline Marval is a painter from the end of the XIXth century and the turn of the 1866th century. Born in 1895 to a family of schoolteachers near Grenoble, she came to painting late. She moved to Paris in XNUMX to Montparnasse, at the heart of artistic life at the end of the century. A modest seamstress by trade, she began painting under the guidance of her companion Jules Flandrin, a student of Gustave Moreau. He encouraged her talent as an observer and colorist. She met Matisse, Guérin, Laurencin, Camin, Rouault, Marquet and others. 
 
The artist opens the way to dreams and sweetness in his poetic compositions, like the dreamlike projections of the mind. 
 
Her paintings were refused at the Salon of 1900, she only exhibited there the following year. At that time, genius collectors and gallery owners Berthe Weill, Ambroise Vollard and Eugène Druet bought and exhibited his work. In February 1902, Jacqueline Marval exhibited alongside Matisse, Marquet, and his companion Flandrin at Berthe Weill, 25 rue Victor Massé. From then on, she took off and exhibited internationally, in Europe, the United States and Asia. 
 
The artist's spontaneous and generous art was praised and recognized by his peers. During a visit to the studio of the painter Lucien Mainssieux, Matisse was astonished by the power of the Odalisques, preserved at the Museum of Fine Arts in Grenoble. In a 1905 correspondence with the artist, Marquet and Manguin paid "the homage of good taste to genius." 
 
The economic crises chained the galleries, reduced to exhibiting the few painters that the First World War had not taken away in addition to the new artists of the beginning of the century. The artist died in poverty and indifference, in the same room of the Bichat hospital as Paul Verlaine. His paintings were dispersed after the closure of the Druet gallery in 1938. 
 
Today, art history and collectors are seeing a renewed interest in this free artist from the turn of the century. Her poetic and colorful universe is invited into the interiors of our contemporaries as well as in museums such as the Petit Palais in Paris and provincial museums such as the Musée de Grenoble. 

Bibliography

•François Roussier, Jacqueline Marval: 1866-1932, Paris, Thalia Édition, 2008 (reprinted 1987), 407 pages

Museums

In France

• Nantes Museum of Fine Arts

• Grenoble Museum of Fine Arts (including a portrait of the artist by Jules Hippolyte Flandrin)

• Castres, Goya museum

• Voiron, Mainssieux museum

• Villefranche-sur-Saône. Paul Dini museum