Michel Robin Michel Robin was born in the wealthy suburb of Rueil Malmaison on the western outskirts of Paris in 1928. From a young age he showed great artistic talent. His father, Georges Charles Robin, was a successful Post-Impressionist painter and Michel began his artistic training under his father's expert tutelage. Michel Robin travelled across France in pursuit of his art. Enthralled by the enchanting river valleys of rural France, it was the Dordogne region and the Loire River Valley that particularly caught the young artists' attention. His father was a master of painting en plein air, following the practice of the Impressionists and the two artists would often paint side by side outdoors on their many visits into the countryside. Growing up with this artistic influence and learning the Post-Impressionist techniques first hand from his father, Michel Robin was able to capture the very essence of French rural life through his atmospheric handling of brush and palette. Michel Robin's technique was more stylised than his fathers; he built up his landscapes with thick brushstrokes of blocks of colour over heavily outlined forms, finished with a delicate rendering of trees and grasses, often using a palette knife. Michel Robin exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes Français, Salon des Independants and Galerie de Rohan. In 1968 he received an honourable mention in the Paris Salon, and was nominated as a member of the Society for the Salon. Robin’s Post-Impressionist landscapes appealed to the critics of the time, and in the following year his canvases won the French Landscape Painters Prize. Despite this success Michel Robin continued to work in his father's studio and his work has subsequently been largely overshadowed by his father's success. In 1981 his father became blind and Michel Robin completed many of his unfinished works, which he signed using his father’s name. As experts in the work of George Charles Robin since the gallery first acquired his work in 1948, Gladwell & Patterson have built up a knowledge into the work of both father and son and are able to identify their respective painterly styles in order that we can accurately authenticate each artist's paintings, from the fine brushstrokes, to the signatures of the two artists.
Michel Robin • Bormes Les Mimosas French, (1928-2005) • Oil on Canvas • 23½" x 35½" • 60 x 90 cms • Price Code D 51