NO. 35 OF 61
Le Grand Monsieur
Pierre-Louis Riché (b. 1954)
$1,400
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 16 × 20 in
- Year
- 2016
- Price
- $1,400
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About the work
A watch chain, cane and folded newspaper give this seated man a formal presence. Pierre-Louis Riché uses enlarged bodies as a means of satire. Here, the little flourishes let dignity and humour sit comfortably together. The eye can enjoy the gentleman’s bearing without deciding who he is, finding a character in the meeting of ceremony and everyday familiarity.
Round glasses, a cigarette and a red handkerchief accompany a feathered black hat and dark blue jacket with brass buttons. Stone gateposts stand before autumn-coloured trees, a red-roofed house and blue hills.
About the artist
Pierre-Louis Riché was born into a farming family in Cap-Haïtien on 19 October 1954. He completed secondary school, and at the age of twenty he began to paint in the studio of Philomé Obin in Cap-Haïtien. For almost twenty years he painted historical subjects, such as a general with his family before the Citadelle, dated 1981. He then turned to the rounded, full-bodied figures known as "les grosses patates". He lives and works in Port-au-Prince.