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Signed ‘J. Cavaillès’ (lower right); titled ‘Cordes sur Ciel No 2’ (on the reverse).
Sizes:
Artwork: 19 × 21.5 cm | 7.5 × 8.5 in
The hill town of Cordes-sur-Ciel in the Tarn, its houses stacked along the ridge under a windy blue-and-white sky, painted in broad flat patches of ochre, olive, pink and black. Jules Cavaillès, born a few kilometres away in Carmaux, knew this landscape from childhood and returned to it throughout his life.
Cavaillès (1901–1977) was a founder of the group ‘La Réalité poétique’ with Brianchon, Legueult, Oudot and Terechkovitch — painters who, after the war, defended a sensuous, decorative figuration against abstraction. His landscapes reduce what he sees to a few bold, cut-out shapes with the contours drawn in black, exactly as in this small oil on board.
The panel is signed at the lower right and titled ‘Cordes sur Ciel No 2’ by the artist on the reverse.
Private Collection, Spain.
Oil on board, unframed. Good condition; the thin paint layer is stable with minor wear at the edges and a few small surface marks. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report.
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Jules Cavaillès was born in Carmaux in 1901, the son of a mining-company employee. He came to Paris in 1919, took evening classes while working, and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1924; his first Salon d’Automne was in 1927, and in 1936 he won the Prix Blumenthal and had his first solo show at the Galerie Charpentier.
With Brianchon, Legueult, Oudot, Terechkovitch, Limouse, Planson and Caillard he formed the group later called ‘La Réalité poétique’ — painters who kept faith with colour, pleasure and the visible world through the years of abstraction. He taught at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts and was elected to the Institut in 1971.
Cavaillès’ subjects are interiors with open windows, bouquets, women reading, the harbours of the Midi and the landscapes of his native Tarn — Cordes-sur-Ciel, Albi, Carmaux — painted in flat, bright patches bounded by black contour, with a decorator’s sense of pattern.
He exhibited from 1946 with the Galerie Romanet and later with Galerie Charpentier and Wally Findlay, was much collected in the United States, and is represented in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Centre Pompidou and museums across France. He died in 1977.
Jules Cavaillès (1901–1977), founder of La Réalité poétique: from Carmaux to the Institut, the open windows and bouquets, the Tarn landscapes, and the view of Cordes-sur-Ciel at Aurora & Athena.
Highlights of the Aurora & Athena autumn sale on 17 October 2026: Bridget Tichenor, Nicholas Roerich, Konstantin Korovin, Gerard Sekoto, Jan Zrzavý, Pan Yuliang, a Miró lithograph and the painters of the École de Paris.
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