Painting

It is though everything sprang from there, achieving completion at last in the flamboyance of Provence, but only after any number of side roads had been exhausted. This desire to paint is an absolute need. As though Paris, the years of training, the learning of various techniques — engraving, the obsession of line — all this was no more than a useful detour leading to the ultimate unfolding of the artist’s deeper self — a painter reaching for the absolute.

Revisiting the same motif over and over again, cutting back and purifying, led Alfred Latour to an ever more stripped out painting style, that verges on abstraction. Thus, the mastery of line, the clarity of colours conjugated with a sobriety of composition which reduces objects to their simplest expression, all these evoke a feeling of careless lightness. And yet, everything in this equilibrium is most carefully considered.

Every painting bears witness to its times and, one by one, each reflects the various currents of the day, without us ever knowing which influence is prompting what effect.

Nicolas Raboud

Eygalières with White Clouds

1962
Oil on canvas
60 x 92 cm

Aureille

1959
Oil on canvas
50 x 65 cm

Marseille, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde

1958
Oil on canvas
50 × 65 cm

Banks of the Rhone

1945
Oil on canvas
50 x 65 cm

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

1942
Watercolour
24.5 x 32 cm

The White Chateau

1948
Oil on canvas
73 x 92 cm

Farmhouse at the foot of the Alpilles

1936
Watercolour
29 x 43 cm

Three Roses

1959
Watercolour
32 x 24.5 cm

Anchor in the Sand

1960
Watercolour
50 x 65 cm

Landscape

1956
Watercolour
12.5 x 17 cm

Rice Paddies

1956
Watercolour
12.5 x 17 cm

Landscape

1961
Watercolour
24.5 x 32 cm

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

1956
Watercolor
12,5 x 17 cm

Landscape with Small Clouds

1961
Watercolour
24.5 x 32 cm

Study of Ruins

Study
1950
Pencil sketch
16.2 x 25 cm

Boat

1960
India ink
50 x 65 cm

Study of Ruins

Study
1950
Pencil sketch
16.2 x 25 cm

Boat

1960
India ink
50 x 65 cm

Dead Tree

1949
Pencil sketch
24.5 x 23 cm

Landscape

1960
India ink
50 x 65 cm

Camargue

1948
Pencil sketch
25 x 32 cm

Carolles

1910
Pen and ink
11 x 17 cm

The Seine

1919
Pen and ink
21.4 x 27 cm

Carolles

1910
Pen and ink
11 x 17 cm

Mount Pilat

1918
Pen and ink
17.5 x 25 cm

Granville

1910
Pen and ink
11 x 17 cm

Sketch of the War

1916
Pen and ink
10.4 x 16.2 cm

Granville

1910
Pen and ink
11 x 17 cm