René Sautin (1881-1968) - Les bords de la Risle

René SAUTIN (1881-1968)

The banks of the Risle, 1949

Watercolor on paper
Painting dimensions: 32 x 49 cm
Signed at the lower right

Provenance: Private collection, Fréjus

Watercolor in fair condition.
Humidity stains and crease marks (visible in the photos)
Paper not mounted
Old metal frame with signs of wear Included.
Framed dimensions: 43 x 60 cm

This watercolor will be listed in the artist’s catalog raisonné, currently in preparation by Robert and Thierry Tuffier.

Original work delivered with invoice and certificate of authenticity.
Fast, careful, and insured shipment.
Buy with complete confidence!

René Sautin (1881-1968) was born in Montfort-sur-Risle in 1881.
He entered the Rouen Fine Arts School in the painting studio of P. Zacharie, then in Paris in Ferrier’s studio where he received guidance from Albert Lebourg, a native of the same village. He then joined the Indépendants with Signac and Luce.
He married Marthe in 1910, settled in Les Andelys in 1911, and befriended the sons of Pissarro, Signac, Luce, Derain, Guillaumin, Lebasque, Bigot, and Gernez, who would gather at Les Andelys to paint along the banks of the Seine.
Imbued with his Norman homeland, René Sautin was essentially a landscape painter. By the early 1920s, he abandoned the impressionist handling for a calm and reasoned Fauvism.
The painter, having found balance in his means of expression from 1925, reached his full maturity in the 1950s. He is one of the few Norman painters to depict his landscapes in such a personal way through power, a certain controlled violence, and a strong sensitivity.
A proud, distinguished, highly cultivated man, he suffered greatly from not being understood in his time and regretted this isolation: “My life has often been hard and difficult…”
René Sautin was born in the same village as the famous painter Albert Lebourg, at Montfort-sur-Risle. But it is at Les Andelys that he spent the greatest part of his life.
After primary and secondary studies in Montfort-sur-Risle and Pont-Audemer, René Sautin immediately turned to drawing: “When my studies were finished, well equipped with a classical background, I entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Rouen in the studio of the painter Philippe Zacharie, a distinguished master for whom drawing was a precious metal. Then I went to Paris where I spent a year in Ferrier’s studio… and I launched into painting with a few good friends and by listening to the advice of the painter Albert Lebourg.”
René Sautin left the capital in 1911 to settle in Les Andelys with his wife.
The early phase of his oeuvre is very influenced by Albert Lebourg, but very quickly his temperament drew him toward a Fauvist painting with calm and measured colors. He himself said of his painting: “To paint, essentially, is to spread paste and not to rub. From there, I paint thickly in impasto, without smoothing, each stroke being definitive. I never return to a tone once the stroke is laid. This gives great power to my painting and a lot of character. What the devil! nature is affirmed. What makes a tone beautiful is its bold and rich color. The whole art of painting resides in doing or interpreting as one feels, as one sees; everything else is snobbery. To paint is to exteriorize one’s temperament. It is an interpretation of one’s thought that one passes on to others.”
The period of World War II profoundly unsettled the artist, for undeniably René Sautin is a true lover of Les Andelys. He never ceased painting the Seine, the quays of Petit-Andely, and the Château Gaillard. He painted very often in the same places, but each time it was a new work that he created.

However, on June 8, 1940, the Germans bombed the town of Les Andelys. It was then discovered that a city had been destroyed by ninety percent. The churches were spared as were a few houses, but the entire town center vanished under the bombardment.
During this period, artists lost the taste for painting. Nonetheless, René Sautin created, in the days following the bombardments, a series of watercolors, as if he wished to preserve a testimony, for future generations, of the city’s apocalyptic vision.

From then on, his work changed. His drawing became more marked, outlined in black.
On the Seine, the barges wore the tricolor flag. In the 1950s, René Sautin continued this tendency to emphasize his drawing. Unfortunately, he gradually lost his sight. The artist compensated for his vision loss with increasingly violent and vivid colors. He stopped painting definitively in 1964, four years before his death.