Anonymous or Daniel CORDIER (1920-2020) - Lot 58

Anonymous or Daniel CORDIER (1920-2020) Portrait or Self-portrait of Daniel Cordier as a young man, circa 1946 Oil on canvas. Minor loss of material. 46 x 33 cm PROVENANCE: Daniel Cordier collection, Paris. In the third volume of his memoirs Alias Caracalla, Amateur d'art, recently published by Gallimard (2024), Daniel Cordier confesses to having considered a career as a painter [pp. 46,47]. It was in an isolated farmhouse he rented in Courcelles-lès-Gisors in the Oise region, under the influence of his friend Jean Delpech, that he tried his hand at brushwork. The emotion and satisfaction he felt in front of his first canvas, a chair in the spirit of Van Gogh, encouraged him to pursue this exhilarating adventure: "Yet this is how painting began to occupy me. I did other still lifes [...] and a whole series of self-portraits. Finally, I had found my vocation: I decided to become a painter. A vocation that would soon be abandoned after a few courses at La Grande Chaumière in Yves Brayer's studio, where he met Bernard Réquichot.