Late 20th Century Jacques Chardon (Stanislas Pozar, 1937–2014) Oil on Canvas Seascape, Signed

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An oil on canvas seascape by Jacques Chardon, the working pseudonym of Stanislas Pozar (Zagreb 1937 – Courbevoie 2014), better … Read more An oil on canvas seascape by Jacques Chardon, the working pseudonym of Stanislas Pozar (Zagreb 1937 – Courbevoie 2014), better known to a generation of French collectors as Michel Thomas.

Pozar arrived in Paris from Croatia as a political refugee and trained at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. By the early 1960s he held a stand at the Place du Tertre in Montmartre, selling Paris views signed Jacques Chardon. He went on to create the Petits Poulbots — the wide-eyed Parisian street children that became a national phenomenon in the 1970s, reproduced on posters, plates, puzzles, postcards and calendars across France. On his death in 2014 it emerged that he had given half the proceeds of his Port-Royal studio to Croatia, having quietly funded his birth country's independence movement for most of his life.

This canvas turns from the city to the coast. A single yellow dory sits at the tideline beneath a towering bank of cumulus, the surf built up in vigorous palette-knife impasto — cream, sea green, ochre and violet worked wet-into-wet. One hot note of color against a cool, atmospheric field. Small in scale, and far more assured than its size suggests.

Signed with the artist's initials J.C. lower left. Unframed stretched canvas, painted to the edges.

Provenance: Acquired from Gallery ETOILE, Paris. See less