Charles Cottet

Charles Cottet 1863-1925

"Those Who Remain" (Celles qui restent), a large preparatory drawing for the right panel of the triptych "In the Land of the Sea" (Au pays de la mer),

Musée d'Orsay collection, currently on loan to the Brest Museum.

Graphite on paper with ink highlights.

Dimensions 57.5 x 75 cm excluding the frame.

Provenance:

- Léonce Bénédite Collection.

Léonce Bénédite, art historian and director of the Musée du Luxembourg, was a great champion and friend of Charles Cottet.

Our drawing, previously unseen on the market, is in good condition. The artist has laid out his subject on a gridded sheet. All the compositional elements of the painting are already in place, and most notably, Cottet is already partitioning and outlining the light. We can see here how the artist intends to contain the dark areas that would gradually take up more space in his work.

Charles Cottet studied painting in the studio of Émile Maillard (1846-1926), then at the Académie Julian in Paris. In June 1899, he joined the Société Nouvelle de Peintres et de Sculpteurs, with a first group exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in March 1900.^]. In the 1900s, along with Lucien Simon, Edmond Aman-Jean, André Dauchez, George Desvallières, and Maurice Denis, he was part of a group of young painters nicknamed "the Black Band" (la Bande noire) by art critics because they rejected the bright canvases of the Impressionists. Most of these artists taught at the Académie de la Palette in Paris.

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