La Place du Bourg, Signed Oil on Panel, French School, 1950s, Carved Frame

Ochre, orange and yellow are laid on in short crossed touches, so the square, the trees and the ground are all built from the same restless matter. A cart stands under the trees on the left, a knot of figures gathers at the centre, two men in hats talk at the right, and a red shopfront burns where the light catches it.

Oil on wood panel, 8 x 10 inches (20 x 25 cm), 14 x 16 inches (36 x 41 cm) framed, signed lower left Paul Flaubert, French School, 1950s, in a carved wood frame.

Two tall trunks frame the view and their canopies close over the top of the panel, leaving one opening of pale sky above the rooftops. Behind the figures the houses climb in three planes, their windows read in single dark strokes, and a shop awning breaks the line of the street. Nothing is drawn.

The paint is laid on thick and left alone. The foliage is built from short loaded touches, each put down once, and the pale facades are dragged in ridges that hold the mark of the brush. Small touches of pure blue and rose are set into the yellows without ever meeting the orange, and the trunks are carried down last, in dark vertical strokes over paint already laid. Nothing is blended, so the mixing happens in the eye and not on the panel.

The signature at the lower left reads Paul Flaubert, brushed in fine dark script over paint already dry. The reverse of the panel carries the title La Place du Bourg in black marker, in capitals. There is no label and no other mark.

The frame is a deep carved moulding in four registers, an outer run of elongated beads, a plain flat, a hollow of acanthus leaves, and fine beading at the sight edge, in a dark waxed finish. It is twice the width of the panel and carries the picture well above its size.

The panel is sound and the paint surface is in good order. The mitres are tight.