Miriam Rocher b. née en 1875

Miriam Rocher was born in Niort and received her first artistic training from the painter Alphonse Combe-Velluet, who was close to her family. At the age of fourteen, she won the awards of the Deux-Sèvres department and the city of Niort, which opened the doors to Paris, where she became a city boarder for three years. During this period, she attended courses at the Académie de dessin. She frequented Puvis de Chavannes’ studio, Antonin Proust’s salon, and befriended Henri Martin, from whom she drew a rich chromatic palette and a certain fragmentation of the brushstroke. She soon neglected the Parisian salons in favor of the Union Artistique of Toulouse. A recognized portraitist and landscape painter, she further emancipated herself technically from 1904 onwards, adopting a more spontaneous, bold, and vigorous brushwork. Her landscapes acquired a lyrical quality, while her portraits became increasingly psychological. In 1911-1912, she undertook an important journey to Mexico and South America, traveling through Brazil, where she painted the portrait of President Hermes da Fonseca, before staying for a time in Argentina, opening a painting studio in Buenos Aires that gained a strong reputation. Between the wars, she settled in Algiers, where she became director of the newly founded Union Artistique de l’Afrique du Nord in 1925.

As noted by Miriam Rocher on the verso, our landscape, likely painted en plein air, precisely dates from the artist’s Argentine sojourn, during which she traveled to the far south of the continent, reaching Tierra del Fuego, the famous archipelago south of the Strait of Magellan. A master of color and light, she plays in her painting with contrasts of pure tones and the interplay of shadow and light on the distant mountains. Such qualities drew the praise of the philosopher Léopold Mabilleau, visiting Buenos Aires in September 1912:

“Miriam Rocher is an artist of talent and taste, whose works are already precious and will become increasingly sought after. She has a sense of light and fluidity that she renders better than anyone. She produces […] moving landscapes; she is the most exquisite and faithful chronicler of Argentine nature and life[1].”

Temporarily inspired by Impressionism, Miriam Rocher here evolved towards a greater synthesis, reducing motifs and lines to their essential values while allowing herself deeper and more vigorous tones, giving her landscape a singularly magical atmosphere. Our canvas was likely exhibited in 1928 in Algiers, as part of a retrospective of the artist, featuring several Argentine works that drew attention:

“Mme Rocher - who is a great traveler - was able to see these regions, so distant that they seem improbable to us, of Tierra del Fuego. Passing the Strait of Magellan, she recorded its strange and Dantean appearance. Two of her canvases show these tragic places in calm weather, making the sea smooth as a pond and the horizon misty. All of this in a refined gray harmony of very high quality[2].”

[1] Mabilleau, Léopold, in Dollin du Fresnel, E., “Propos d’art,” L’Echo d’Alger, 15 May 1925, p. 3.
[2] M., G.-S., “Notes d’art – Exposition Miriam Rocher,” L’Echo d’Alger, 24 December 1928, p. 3.