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Lot 383
  • 383

Max Ernst

Estimate
80,000 - 120,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Max Ernst
  • PORTRAIT DE MADAME DYER
  • signed Max Ernst (lower right)
  • oil on canvas
  • 24 by 19.2cm., 9 7/8 by 7 5/8 in.

Provenance

Louise Dyer, Paris
Private Collection, Paris
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 1st July 1998, lot 147
Faggionato Fine Arts, London (purchased at the above sale)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie des Grands Augustins, Présence de Max Ernst, 1976
Melbourne, University Art Gallery, L'Oiseau-Lyre: The Work of Louise Dyer and the Lyrebird Press, 1985

Literature

Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Œuvre-Katalog, Werke, 1929-1938, Cologne, 1979, no. 1896, illustrated p. 169
Jim Davidson, Lyrebird Rising: Louise Dyer of L'Oiseau-Lyre 1884-1962, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 265 & 266

Catalogue Note

COMP: 433D07008_COMP
Self Portrait, c. 1938, frottage, chalk on photograph (Sprengel Museum, Hanover)

In the 1930s the tendency towards abstraction in Ernst's work becomes more pronounced, and Portrait de Madame Dyer exemplifies this trend, with the sitter's eye providing the sole figurative element in a composition which challenges the representative norms of portraiture. Several colourful, collage-like motifs drawn from nature, such as the spider-web-like element to the left of the eye, cover the rest of the woman's face, on the one hand concealing her face whilst highlighting the sitter's vital characteristic: her intensely focused gaze.🎐

Louise Dyer, the Australian music publisher, was a renowned patron of the Arts and Music in Paris from 1928 to 1962. The present Surrealist portrait was painted during one of the most important periods of her life: in 1932 she was Lady Mayoress of Melbourne; in 1933, she founded the mu🍃sic publishing house Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre and in 1934 she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur. She was a fervent supporter and friend of the Surrealist group, and particularly admired Max Ernst's artistic aspiration of 'describing a strangeness beyond comprehension' (Werner Spies, 'Nightmare and Deliverance', in Max Ernst, A Retrospective, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p. 3).