Maurice Savin, Nude Reclining (1940)

MAURICE SAVIN (Moras-en-Valloire 1894 - Paris 1973) Reclining nude. 1940. Oil on canvas. 54 X 74 cm. Signed bottom right: savin. Inscribed on the back: Maurice Savin / 9 rue Pauly / Paris XIV / Reclining nude (1940) Exhibition: Salon des Tuileries, Palais de Chaillot, 1940, under no. 541. Reference: Salon des Tuileries, Catalogue of works of painting, sculpture, drawing... Exhibited at the Palais de Chaillot from 3 April to 25 April 1940 (grouping of the Salon d'automne, Salon des Tuileries), p. 88, no. 541. Three small chips in the paint layer. Maurice Savin was born in Moras-en-Valloire, in the Drôme, 75 km south of Lyon. After completing his secondary education, he enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. He then began a career as a painter and designer in the field of decorative arts, notably creating designs and models for the Gobelins and Sèvres. Today, this major artist has fallen into obscurity, although he enjoyed great renown in the 1930s and 1940s, both in France and internationally. His works are present at the Petit Palais, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, as well as in the museums of Orléans, Valence, and Grenoble. In England, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum also hold works by Savin. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, his depictions of bathers lounging by ponds and streams became somewhat repetitive, but this intimate nude, representing a figure lying on a bed and painted in shades of yellow ochre and brown, dates from 1940, a period when Savin was at the height of his art. His brushwork is direct, graceful, and precise. This painting was exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries, at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, from 3 to 25 April 1940.