Dupas watercolor

JEAN DUPAS                 Bordeaux 1882 – 1964 Paris

An Allegory of Navigation.

Drawing with watercolor additions and subsidiary marginal sketches all related to the central subject; monogrammed by the artist and dated 1928. In fine, fresh condition, the watercolor very bright.

Dupas participated in the international style of decoration and painting called Art Deco which began in the later 1920s and lasted throughout the 1930s. The outbreak of World War II ended the queasy optimism of European culture and with it Art Deco.

It is meaningful to see the elegant female nude of our drawing as an idealized reference to a culture which having emerged from the horror of World War I was now trying to find a pleasurable life and a distraction from the economic problems of the late 1920s and 1930s. As a painter, Dupas was very involved with art as decoration; his sensual females, in particular, constitute some of the most arresting and memorable of the time.

He was one of the principal decorators of France’s Normandie. From her launch in 1932, her maiden voyage in 1935 and until her destruction in 1940, Normandie was the fastest and most luxurious transatlantic ocean liner of the day. It is tempting to see our drawing as related to the Normandie salon decoration which included an allegory of navigation, but it is unknown if Dupas had already begun projects for the ship in 1928.

340 x 420 mm    13 3/8 x 16 ½ inches