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Are you interested in this item? This item is up for auction at Catawiki. Please click on "respond to advert" (orange button) to get redirected to the Catawiki website. Catawiki’s goal is to make special objects universally available. Our weekly auctions feature thousands of unusual, rare, and exceptional objects you won’t find in just any store. Artist: Janie Michels (1920 - 2009)
Title: “Nature morte aux fruits”
Media and support: Gouache and pastel on paper
Special feature of the work: Original painting signed lower right
Size: 30 cm x 23 cm
Condition: Good, small restored 2-cm tear in the margin
Origin: The artist's studio, the invoice makes the gallery liable for the authenticity of the work.
Why Bertrand likes it: Intimate and sometimes timeless works that advocate a certain art of living and the love of beauty. I love this Matisse-like presence, the softness of the colours and the love she has for her adopted land of Normandy.
Why Nathan likes it: I see Matisse, but also Marc Chagall and sometimes even Van Gogh. She has gone through some hectic times but throughout Janie's work, I feel a wonderful sense of optimism. I have Janie Michels on the wall in my house, and I look at them with the greatest pleasure.
Comment of the appraiser: What we immediately notice in the works of Janie Michels is the elegance of this artist of character who is above all an independent woman. It is not surprising that the line of the "Countess of the Chapel", who was to become the official painter of the Belgian court, is lively and expressive but also has a certain lightness. On canvas, this lively gesture combined with the softness of the colours constitutes the main feature of the artist's style. With her subjects, Janie Michels lets us glimpse a modern world that is both fabulous and a little out of time, nostalgic for the 19th or Greek antiquity. We can better understand her painting when we know that her spiritual fathers were James Ensor and Henri Matisse, of whom she was the model and pupil for 14 years. She borrows from Ensor the taste of light and bright colours, but it is in her interiors and still lifes that the influence of the master Matisse is the most prominent. We find this freedom of drawing specific to the artist but also a softened fawn colour palette. Painting flowers is an opportunity for the artist to bathe in colour and look for all its hues. The artist also invites us, with class but without pretension, to enter her intimacy, populated by famous characters from the artistic world, beautiful properties in which her favourite animals evolve: horses and cats. She takes us for a walk in this Normandy that we appreciate so much, the countryside of the Pays d'Auge and the seaside (Deauville, Trouville and Honfleur...). Throughout her career, she kept a taste for portraiture and remained faithful to the technique taught by Matisse. She started with classic charcoal drawing and then pared down to find the essential line. Janie Michels kept like a treasure the letters of the Master in which he gave her his advice.
Biography: Of Belgian and Dutch origin, Janie Michels was eight years old when she encountered painting in Ostend in James Ensor's studio, filled with carnival masks, skeletons and shells. She studied at the School of Fine Arts in Brussels and then fled occupied Belgium for the south of France in 1940. Determined to meet Matisse, she went to see the master but was refused entry by his wife. She then left a drawing box and her telephone number. The quality of her drawings and the originality of the artist's style led Matisse to invite her. She became his model and pupil until his death in 1954. In the 50s, she met Maurice Chevalier whose portrait she made and with whom she settled for a time to paint. In 1978, she moved to Saint-Gatien near Honfleur where she found the light of her native Belgium and Holland. The artist exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d'Automne, of which she was a member. Numerous solo exhibitions of the artist's work were organised in Paris, New York and Normandy. Several establishments regularly hosted her works: The establishment of Madame Blais, the famous Hotel de l'écrin, rue Eugene Boudin in Honfleur, the Château de Pinterville, property of Princess Marguerite Tran and the farm inn of Pennedepie. Her works are present in the Osaka Museum in Japan and in the famous Pushkin Museum in Moscow, which has the finest collection of Matisse in the world. She was added to the Bénézit in 1953 with a biography by the writer Paul Guth. At that time, she was represented by the Galerie David on rue Matignon alongside Bernard Buffet and Jean Carzou. 67506317
