GABRIELLE VINCENT - Lot 39

GABRIELLE VINCENT ERNEST AND CELESTINE Ernest and Celestine at the museum, Éditions Duculot 1985 Au musée, rivalité, original cover. Watercolor on paper 29.6 × 20.8 cm (11.65 × 8.19 in.) Here, Gabrielle Vincent returns to her youthful years; having passed through the Beaux-Arts, from which she graduated brilliantly with the congratulations of the jury, she made a lot of artist's copies; she returns to this subject with great amusement. Ernest and the Mona Lisa, an unprecedented face-to-face encounter. Ernest looks amused to discover this great lady, but doesn't look her in the eye, nor does she look at the viewer. As for Célestine, not at all impressed by the lady in question, she dreams of nothing more than leaving, and pulls with all her might on Ernest's arm. She's in the same color scheme as her rival, but in reverse: yellow and black, head and clothes reversed. The set is extremely spare to make room for this face-off; all the surrounding paintings disappear, eclipsed. Ernest, all in gray, engrossed in his suit, has just come from a job interview with the museum director, a good indication of how the illustrator saw the world of work. An all-gray world, and a real straitjacket. In this album, Gabrielle Vincent presents her ideal museum, from Leonardo da Vinci to Monet, via Velasquez, Vermeer and Chardin; she brilliantly takes us from the Louvre to the Musée d'Orsay, via the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She's having fun and enjoying herself.