Jules Cavaillès and La Réalité poétique

In the years when abstraction swept Paris, a small group of painters kept faith with colour, pleasure and the visible world. Critics called them La Réalité poétique, and Jules Cavaillès (1901–1977) was one of its founders. His open windows, bouquets and Mediterranean harbours are among the happiest pictures of post-war France; a small view of Cordes-sur-Ciel, titled by the artist on the reverse, is in our Modern Masters: 20th Century Art sale.

From Carmaux to the Beaux-Arts

Cavaillès was born in Carmaux, in the Tarn, in 1901, the son of an employee of the mining company. He came to Paris in 1919, worked by day and drew at evening classes, and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1924. His first Salon d’Automne was in 1927; in 1936 he won the Prix Blumenthal and had his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Charpentier — the beginning of a career that would take him to the Institut de France in 1971.

La Réalité poétique

With Maurice Brianchon, Raymond Legueult, Roland Oudot, Kostia Terechkovitch, Roger Limouse, André Planson and Christian Caillard, Cavaillès formed the group that, after 1945, defended a sensuous, decorative figuration against the tide of abstraction. His subjects are interiors with a window open on the sea, women reading, flowers, the ports of the Midi — and the landscapes of his native Tarn: Albi, Carmaux and the hill town of Cordes-sur-Ciel, painted in flat, bright patches bounded by black contour, with a decorator’s sense of pattern.

The oil on board in our sale is one of those views: the houses of Cordes stacked along the ridge under a windy blue-and-white sky, in patches of ochre, olive, pink and black. Cavaillès titled it ‘Cordes sur Ciel No 2’ on the reverse.

Collections and the market

Cavaillès exhibited from 1946 with the Galerie Romanet and later with Charpentier and Wally Findlay, and was much collected in the United States. He is represented in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Centre Pompidou and museums across France. His work has a steady, international market, with the large windows and bouquets leading and the small landscapes of the Tarn offering an accessible way in. More on his artist page.

At Aurora & Athena

Cordes-sur-Ciel, oil on board, is offered on 17 October 2026 with an estimate of 400 – 600 €. Photographs, condition summary and bidding on the lot page.