Reuven Rubin

Orientala By Reuven Rubin

20th century

René Magritte 1898-1967 Belgian Le carnaval du sage (The Sage’s Carnival) Signed “Magritte” (lower right); titled and dated "Le carnaval du sage 1947" (en verso) Oil on canvas The enigmatic paintings of René Magritte have become some of the most familiar and celebrated of the Surrealist movement. Among the most influential of the Surrealist painters of the 20th century, Magritte is an artist of international renown, as beloved for his popular appeal as he is for the psychological intensity of his works. The present oil on canvas, entitled Le carnaval du sage, was executed in 1947 at the height of his career, and it is a tour-de-force example of the haunting, mysterious scenes that comprise his oeuvre. Painted in the years following the Second World War, Le carnaval du sage showcases several recurring themes from Magritte’s oeuvre. Chiefly, a juxtaposition between the visible and the hidden is keenly felt. Throughout his career, Magritte explores the psychological obsession with revealing what is hidden, particularly with regard to the human face. In his Le fils de l’homme, he obscures the face of a man in a bowler hat with an apple, while his Les amants (Metropolitan Museum of Art) conceals the faces of two lovers with white sheets. In Le carnaval du sage, Magritte juxtaposes the blatant nudity of his central figure by masking her face, simultaneously revealing and concealing her from the viewer. The work also incorporates two of Magritte’s most common tropes – the glass of water and the baguette. Lending the scene a strange sense of domesticity, they appear infinitely familiar and distinctly out of place, and thus heighten the uncanny effect of Magritte’s composition. In the background hovers a ghost obscured by a sheet, a figure which was of particular fascination to Magritte beginning in 1946. He once wrote to his fellow Surrealist Paul Nougé: "I saw in a dream an answer to the problem of the ghost: the traditional ghost draped...

French Academic painter Guillaume Seignac was renowned for his masterful treatment of the idealized nude. His languishing female subjects based on Greco-Roman prototypes were and rem...

This compelling portrait of Salome was composed by the French painter Marie Felix Hippolyte-Lucas. While the celebrated artist's oeuvre is filled with bright and cheerful portraits of aristocratic women surrounded by florals, here he takes a different approach. Hippolyte-Lucas' Salome is simultaneously exotic and highly modern, rendered in a style that is both theatrical and bold. The monumental work's rich color palette is filled with gem-inspired hues that lend drama to the scene, highlighting the blatant sexuality of this legendary seductress. Though Salome is not named in the New Testament, she has appeared time and time again in art and literature over the centuries, as both an innocent and a seductress. Her mother, Herodias, resented John the Baptist, who denounced her marriage to King Herod as unlawful. At one evening meal, Salome danced...

French Academic painter Louis-Joseph Courtat displays his mastery of composition and the female form in this entrancing oil on canvas. Entitled Baigneuses, the work was painted for and exhibited at the 1885 Paris Salon, the foremost exhibition of painters in the Western world. Large in size, it captures two nude bathers within a tranquil beach scene. While the artist's skill for landscape painting is on display, it is his command of form, light and color that bring this canvas to life. The artist specialized in paintings that glorified the nude, and his skill is clear in the luminosity of his models' skin and the classical beauty of their form and proportions. With their soft, undulating curves and flowing hair, Courtat's models reflect the two key influences on the young painter, that of the great Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres as well as his teacher Alexandre Cabanel. Like these two greats who came before him, Courtat similarly follows in the artistic tradition of the female nude that is traceable to classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Born in Paris in 1847, Courtat studied at the famed École des Beaux-Arts under Cabanel. He was one of the Academic master's first students at the school, where he began to teach in 1864. Displaying considerable skill at an early age, Courtat won the Prix de Rome around 1870, and subsequently studied in Rome for a number of years. He returned to Paris in 1873 to make his debut at the Salon, where he was met with immediate success, receiving a third class medal. He received medals again in 1874 and 1875, a remarkable achievement for a painter of his age. In addition to the monumental nudes...

This extraordinary Italian gouache and oil on canvas brings two of the most popular characters from Greek mythology vividly the life - the nymph and the satyr. Both creatures are famed for their carefree natures and lascivious temperaments, and tales abound of satyrs pursing nubile nymphs in order to rape or seduce them, usually with little success. One such narrative humorously unfolds in the present piece, which depicts an indignant satyr captured by three nymphs with a golden net. The relationship between these two mythological creatures was a popular one for artists throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, though its origins stretch back to antiquity. Both satyrs and nymphs...

Signed “G-Seignac” (lower right) Oil on canvas French Academic painter Guillaume Seignac was renowned for his masterful treatment of the idealized nude. His languishing female subje...

Nu Assise by Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro (1878-1952) Oil on canvas
 55 x 47 cm (21 ⅝ x 18 ½ inches) 
Signed lower left, Ludovic Rodo
 Executed circa 1910 This work is accompanied by a cer...

William Malherbe (French, 1884 – 1955) La Baigneuse Oil on canvas 51 x 35.1/2 in. (130 x 90 cm.) William Malherbe was a French Post Impressionist painter born in 1884. His success c...

Beautifully executed original oil on canvas painting by the French artist, Maryse Ducaire-Rogue of a seated female nude. Signed by the artist lower right. Condition is good. Circa ...

Stamped, verso, with the estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and painted circa 1958. A substantial, Post-Impressionist style figural oil showing a young woman seat...

Signed lower right "Sears" (American, 20th century) and dated 1960. A substantial, Expressionist style figural oil showing a partially-draped woman seated at a dressing-table and br...

Signed lower right, 'Rob Leepin' for Robert Leepin (Danish, 1884-1967) and painted circa 1925. Robert Leepin first studied under Lauritz Tuxen and Viggo Johansen at Denmark's Royal ...