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Lot Essay
Five Women on the Beach (Lot 112) is a good example of the style development of the Belgian artist Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès during the years after the Second World War. He is well known for choosing daily scenes to depict, and Bali was a rich source of inspiration for him. The Balinese people, especially women in the street, at the market, at a festival, on the beach, in the garden or in his house; the luxuriant flora, the beach and the sea bathed in bright sunlight were all highly interesting subjects for Le Mayeur to paint. After he married his model Ni Pollok in 1935, the cottage and garden he built himself on the beach in Sanur became his favourite location serving as a setting for his paintings. He wanted to surround himself "with nothing but beauty" and turned the place in a true paradise full of exuberant trees and flowers, terraces, little temples, statues and a lotus pond, saying: "it all makes up a worthy frame around Pollok's beauty".
This painting which depicts five women on the beach picking flowers is a very good example of these idyllic scenes situated around his own stretch of land. Ni Pollok's face is clearly recognisable in the woman holding the flower basket. The way Le Mayeur paints changes within these years. From merely sketchy, colourful patches suggesting flowers and leaves without entering into great detail in the pre-war period, he later tended to elaborate and detail painted flora more frequently.
The composition also no longer employs large figures of women with elongated limbs, plane-absorbing, as he used to paint before the war. Now Le Mayeur creates multi-figure pieces in a spacious surrounding. The various attitudes of the women appear again and again on his canvases throughout his whole career. Standing figures with upstretched arms or sitting on the ground under a yellow umbrella are often recurring images. Within his compositions, the figures are positioned in little groups of two, three or more without giving evidence of any signs of interaction. The whole scene is located in a sort of 'vista'; a view to the open sea and to the horizon, fringed by flowered branches suggesting depth. An intense and subtle use of colour in combination with sparkling light effects remains his main force. His palette favours gentle earthy colours with beige and soft blues for the sea and sand contrasted to red, pink, orange and purple accents in the sarongs. Drs. C.Z. Huizing
This painting which depicts five women on the beach picking flowers is a very good example of these idyllic scenes situated around his own stretch of land. Ni Pollok's face is clearly recognisable in the woman holding the flower basket. The way Le Mayeur paints changes within these years. From merely sketchy, colourful patches suggesting flowers and leaves without entering into great detail in the pre-war period, he later tended to elaborate and detail painted flora more frequently.
The composition also no longer employs large figures of women with elongated limbs, plane-absorbing, as he used to paint before the war. Now Le Mayeur creates multi-figure pieces in a spacious surrounding. The various attitudes of the women appear again and again on his canvases throughout his whole career. Standing figures with upstretched arms or sitting on the ground under a yellow umbrella are often recurring images. Within his compositions, the figures are positioned in little groups of two, three or more without giving evidence of any signs of interaction. The whole scene is located in a sort of 'vista'; a view to the open sea and to the horizon, fringed by flowered branches suggesting depth. An intense and subtle use of colour in combination with sparkling light effects remains his main force. His palette favours gentle earthy colours with beige and soft blues for the sea and sand contrasted to red, pink, orange and purple accents in the sarongs. Drs. C.Z. Huizing