Lot 49: César Pattein , French 1850-1931 You Shall Not Pass oil on canvas

signed CESAR PATTEIN and dated 1907 (center right) oil on canvas

measurements 33 1/4 by 51 1/8 in. alternate measurements 84.4 by 129.8 cm

Private Collection, Finland

Born in Steenvoorde, in the north of France, Pattein was raised among farmers, and throughout his life maintained a close connection to the rural region. He seldom traveled much further than Lille for his artistic education, with the occasional journey to Paris when exhibiting at the Salon. While he experimented in his early career with portraiture and historical and religious subjects, Pattein was driven to honor the agrarian traditions of his youth. Such artistic goals likely led him in the mid 1880s to the atelier of Jules Breton, who enjoyed critical and commercial success for his evocative portrayals of the French peasant. Throughout the late nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth, Pattein completed a series of works which portrayed rustic rituals, particularly those involving the harvest or other celebrations of agrarian abundance. In particular, the proliferation of colorful and hardy wildflowers of France's northern region was a frequent inspiration. Unlike the florals associated with urban-based paintings--cultivated bouquets set in well-appointed rooms, bunches of cut flowers offered from shabby vendors in Paris' cramped market stalls--free-growing blossoms populated country-set Pattein works such as You Shall Not Pass. Here, a group of girls still youthful yet old enough to work, as suggested by their water pitcher, lunch basket, and hoes, return from the fields. A team of younger girls laugh impishly as they raise up a string of flowers (the result of what is their own long labor, twisting each stem together along a rough rope) to impede the workers' passage. While obviously idealized, the two groups portray in their own way the honest pleasures of the French countryside, where the end of a hard day's work is marked by a simple game and easy smile.