LE DERNIER CHEF-D'OEUVRE PRÉPARATOIRE DE VICTOR TARDIEU
Director of the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine
École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon; Prix de l’Indochine, 1920
Large preparatory study for Dockers at Genoa
Oil on canvas
224 × 94.5 cm
Unsigned
(Creases and restoration; minor areas of paint lifting lower right)
Provenance: The artist’s family
The last known preparatory study for the monumental composition Dockers at Genoa, this impressive large-scale work stands as a revealing testament to Tardieu’s academic training. Educated at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and later in Paris under Léon Bonnat and Albert Maignan, Tardieu developed a rigorous draftsmanship and a profound understanding of classical form.
Working in a vein indebted to 19th-century Social Realism, the artist here conveys the physical hardship of manual labour. Reflecting his admiration for Michelangelo, Tardieu sculpts a body in tension, captured in a masterfully executed contrapposto beneath the weight of a jute sack. The modelling is precise, and the structured pose recalls the great masters of classical painting—an inheritance rich in meaning and intention.
Through both its monumental scale and its compositional strength, this preparatory study already anticipates the commanding figures of the fresco La Métropole, painted for the Université de Hanoï. It forms part of a broader cycle devoted to the lives of workers, culminating in the finished painting, which achieved €140,000 (Lynda Trouvé, Indochine | Chapitre 12, 22 March 2022, lot 102), while the modello realised €16,000 in the same sale (lot 103).
Estimation : 20 000 / 30 0000 €