Henry Ottmann (1877-1927) - Two naked women

Oil on canvas signed lower right

Dimensions : H. 73 x W. 60 cm (with frame : H. 91 x W.77 cm)

At the end of the 19th century, Henri Ottmann studied in Paris at the Académie Julian. At the age of 21, he was one of the founders of the of the Atelier Libre Labeur for Painters in Brussels. In 1903, he exhibited in La Libre Esthétique, three views of a train station (wind, frost, fog), among which "View of the Luxembourg station in Brussels" acquired by the Musée d'Orsay in 1989.

A great admirer of Renoir, Ottmann quickly learned the lessons of Impressionism and drew his inspiration in the early years of the 20th century from the Fauve movement.  He then moved to Montmartre and from 1905 participated in the Salon des indépendants, the Salon d'automne, the Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts, and the Salon des Tuileries. Before the First World War, Ottmann painted landscapes and still lifes whose radicalism is reminiscent of Cézanne. Nudes in the open air are also, for this extraordinary artist, an important and varied source of inspiration: While their aesthetics are more postimpressionist, the painting "Sleeping Courtesan" preserved in Paris at the Georges Pompidou Center, is a pure academic masterpiece that shows the immense talent of this painter. In the exhibition entitled "Plural Modernities at the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris from 2013 to 2015", this nude was considered by the curators to be at the crossroads of Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus and Raphael's nudes, whose lines Ingres had long observed.