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Signed and dated ‘P. Ernest Kohl 25.’ (lower left).
Sizes:
Frame: 32 × 35 cm | 12.6 × 13.8 in
Artwork: 17 × 20 cm | 6.7 × 7.9 in
A seated model seen from behind, her weight on one arm, one knee drawn up, the body drawn in a few sweeping charcoal lines and washed with warm sepia and a touch of yellow and blue. It is a study made quickly from life, and it has the freedom of the Paris academies of the 1920s.
Pierre Ernest Kohl (1897–1985), born in Monaco, refused the family business for the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and lived in Paris from 1920 to 1938, a friend of Max Jacob and Léon-Paul Fargue, exhibiting alongside Braque, Chagall, Picasso and Modigliani; at Picasso’s suggestion he spent eight years making pottery before returning to painting, drawing and watercolour. He went back to Monaco in 1940 and worked there until his death.
Signed and dated ‘P. Ernest Kohl 25.’ at the lower left. Framed under glass.
Private Collection, Spain.
Watercolour and charcoal on paper, framed under glass. The sheet is evenly toned with light surface dirt; the media are stable; not examined out of the frame. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report.
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Pierre Ernest Kohl was born in Monaco on 3 February 1897, the son of a prosperous entrepreneur who expected him to take over the family business. He chose painting instead and entered the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he lived from 1920 to 1938 among the writers and painters of Montparnasse — a friend of Max Jacob and Léon-Paul Fargue, exhibiting alongside Braque, Chagall, Picasso and Modigliani.
At Picasso’s suggestion he spent eight years making pottery before giving it up to devote himself entirely to painting, drawing and watercolour.
Kohl’s art favours imagination and the dreamlike: figures, nudes, landscapes and fantastical compositions in a free, lyrical hand, often in watercolour and charcoal. His early Paris studies from the model belong to the academies of the 1920s; the later work grows more oneiric.
He returned to Monaco in 1940 and worked there for the rest of his life, dying in Neuchâtel on 6 June 1985. The Centre Pompidou holds work by him, and his paintings and watercolours pass regularly through the sale rooms of Monaco and Switzerland.
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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