Arbre en Fleurs

Here a solitary tree (maybe cherry or hawthorn) is depicted in full blossom, standing out against a distant landscape.  The influence of Japanese prints (much beloved by the Impressionists) can be seen in this work, both in the subject matter and the use of bold, flat panels of colour.  Deborne uses short, bold brush strokes to delineate the foreground and muted, softer shades for the faraway hills, giving the work a decorative, design-like quality which was very innovative for the time.

Robert Deborne

Robert Deborne was born in 1870 in Viviers, a small cathedral town in the South of France. Little is known of the finer details of Deborne’s life and he remains rather an enigma.   He was the son of a rich farmer, which gave him the opportunity to concentrate on his painting without financial pressures. Indeed, he was so dedicated that he abandoned his family just before the First World War, enabling him to focus completely on his work. Despite his prolificacy, he decided never to hold a solo exhibition nor had any connection with an art dealer to sell his works, although he exhibited often at the Salon d’Automne in Paris (becoming a member in 1923) and the Salon du Sud-Est.

A noted talent in his day, Deborne exhibited with major artists at the Salon du Sud-Est. This salon exhibition was on during the winter, which was perfect for Deborne as he was able to paint all summer, his preferred season. The Salon was a forum for unknown, innovative, emerging artists. His paintings were hung alongside works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Gaugin, Georges Rouault, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Felix Vallotton and Edouard Vullard, to name but a few.

Deborne was exhibiting at the Salon du Sud-Est in 1905, the year when the press coined the then rather disparaging term of ‘Fauves’ (French for ‘wild beasts’) to describe artists using strong, separate, unnatural colours in a representational manner, moving away from the realism of impressionism.  The phrase stuck and the new movement of Fauvism was recognised, of which Deborne was certainly a part and influenced by.

Deborne had a close friendship with Paul Signac with whom he exhibited on several occasions at the Salon de Sud-Est. Signac spent some time in Viviers with Deborne, and the two are known to have been together on the banks of the Rhône, sketching and painting.

He mostly painted scenes of Viviers, his home town on the Rhône and its environs.  He also featured Nebbio in Corsica in many of his paintings.  His works are very much centered on these places that he loved, and his depictions of the Rhône, its banks and the hills beside it are poetically marked by variations in time, weather and season. He was particularly fond of painting at dawn and dusk.

Robert Deborne returned to the same landscapes again and again, portraying them from different perspectives and in changing light. This was a deliberate choice – he wanted to share the beauty of these inspiring places that were immediately before him.  Vivarais to Deborne was what the Montagne Sainte-Victoire was for Cézanne or the banks of the Creuse were for Guillaumin. These landscapes were his life, and every brushstroke illuminates the beauty of these places for others to experience.