Alphonse Ernest Iker, known as Alphie Iker circa 1870-circa 1945

“Iker continues to develop his very original, very robust, very captivating talent. His very harshness has great charm. In his figures of women, he introduces an irritating gentleness, mingled with fierce modesty. And this through pure effusion of personality!”

Dated 1891 and exhibited on at least three occasions between 1893 and 1895, our striking pastel portrait of a woman illustrates the praise expressed by the poet and novelist Émile Hinzelin with regard to Alphonse-Ernest Iker, and further sheds light on the early production of this Montmartre painter. A native of the capital, the artist completed part of his training at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he appears in the registers as a student before 1894. Establishing his studio on rue Lepic, on the Butte, he began as a landscape painter, producing views of Paris and its nearby suburbs, and gradually made pastel one of his specialties, focusing on rendering the different variations of light throughout the day. From as early as 1891, his works were praised at the Salon des Indépendants: “among the young artists who give the greatest promise is M. Iker, whose pastel is a very delicate and very personal work.”

From 1892 onward, he regularly took part in the exhibitions of the Impressionist and Symbolist Painters organized by the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville on rue Le Peletier in Paris. Exhibiting alongside Maurice Denis, Bonnard, Filiger, Vuillard, Verkade, Anquetin, Sérusier, Séon, Ranson, and Toulouse-Lautrec, Iker was associated by critics with the Symbolist group. The renowned storyteller and columnist Firmin Javel thus described him as a “poet-landscape painter, [...] who sings nature with accents of a discreet and penetrating melody. His small canvases are so many windows opened onto a perhaps unreal world, but one of irresistible attraction.” Exhibiting at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1893, then at the Salon des Cent conceived by Léon Deschamps and launched in Paris in February 1894 in the hall of the journal La Plume, Iker produced several pastel portraits of men of letters close to him, such as Louis Dumur, Paul Wacquez, and Georges d’Esparbès. Shown several times in 1893: at the Galerie Georges Petit, at the Indépendants, and then at Le Barc de Boutteville. This last portrait in particular elicited praise from critics, as the artist had succeeded in rendering his model vividly, “whose eyes are very watchful, very vibrant, as when he recites his beautiful verses.”

Exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants of 1893 alongside the famous portrait of the writer under the title Convalescente (cat. no. 689), our pastel is striking both for the technical mastery of its author and for the expressiveness of the sitter. Marked by the powerful and tragic symbolism that emanates from it, the critic Daniel Dux dwells at length on this singular female effigy: “In the discolored pupils of a young woman, in her still pale and trembling lips, in the skin of her face pearly in places, breathe all the anguish of having brushed against death and the joy of being reborn to daylight.” A keen analyst, Dux concludes his article by emphasizing the avant-garde quality contained in the synthetic and cloisonné handling of the work: “the dryness of execution seems like an additional poetry.” Through a deliberately tight, almost photographic framing, Iker fixes the features of a young dark-haired woman with pale blue eyes, her gaze still lost in thought, dressed in a white dressing gown with the appearance of a shroud. The latter, echoing the pallid complexion of the convalescent, offers a vibrant contrast with the bright orange pillow and the pink-and-white floral curtain in the background, whose lack of depth and modeling evokes Japanese prints. By associating illness and death, subjects dear to the Symbolists, with resolutely modern formal elements, Iker aligns himself with the avant-garde and justifies the praise of journalist and art critic Gustave Babin, who then regarded him as “one of the most talented among the young.”