Agostini: Olive Trees By The Sea In Provence, Mediterranean Landscape

This painting captures a mood, and a moment. The blazing mediterranean sun at midday, so strong it almost hurts the eye, glorious brightness, a strong breeze over the sea.

With an open composition, depiction of light in its changing qualities, and unusual visual angles, this work of art is a perfect example of post impressionistic painting .. but with a twist.

The artist is also resolutely modern: there is acuity, and a very individual note to the painting, with the use of thick impasto that heightens our experience of the ancient olive trees with their silvery, fluttering leaves.

Dating from the 1930s or 1940s, I believe this to be an early - yet surprisingly mature- work of the artist Max Agostini (1914-1997) who became known as the Master of Contemporary Impressionism in the 1960s. Agostini, of Corsican origin, had studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts before the war, and the postwar years was already recognised as an excellent portrait and landscape artist.

Signed M Agostini at the lower left, our oil on canvas measures 38 x 55 cm. Presented in its original limed wood frame, the overall framed size is approximately 47 x 63 cm