Henri Wirth (1869-1947) - Charming Painting: The Artist & The Young Roman Soldier

  

Painting (oil on wood panel), dating from the 1930s/1940s and signed H. It is a work featuring two characters, a young couple. They are both in a corner of a paradisiacal nature.

He wears a Roman soldier's outfit with a helmet. He holds a wooden sword in his hands, suggesting that he is a young soldier still in training. Behind him is a beautiful young woman with a long blue dress, a flower wreath in her hair giving her almost a nymph-like appearance.

The sun shines on the young man and his shadow is behind him. She is drawing the outlines of the soldier on the stone wall. This painting, in the spirit of the Academic painters of the 19th century, is both an ode to love, art, youth, and the passage of time. He was originally from Val-d'Oise, from the town of Deuil-la-Barre.

His father was Luxembourgish and his mother French. During his adolescence, he took classes in the Louvre studios and then enrolled in the Beaux-Arts of Paris. He was a student of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jean-Baptiste Lavastre, and Maurice Cossmann. He began his career like many painters in Montmartre, painting scenes of Parisian life but also landscapes around the Capital in Barbizon, Fontainebleau, etc... Later, he traveled throughout France and is also known for his views of the Alps or Brittany, a region he particularly enjoyed.

He also made long stays abroad, in Monaco, Venice in Italy, or Turkey. During his life, he received numerous commissions for murals or paintings. Some Parisian apartments still have the painter's works on their ceilings, municipalities ordered decorative works from him, and Alfred de Rothschild, the famous banker with whom he became friends, commissioned a very large fresco from him.

To this day, the Museum of the Citadel of Belle-Île-en-Mer possesses one of his works which also has a good market value. Dimensions: - 73 cm / 50 cm. Note: the painting is in good overall condition! I am available if you have any questions. More photos available on request.

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