Philippe Henri Noyer (1917-1985) French, Large Signed and Numbered Serigraph. Depicts a woman with her blouse open lounging in a chair by a ornate vase and blossoming plant, with a cheetah at her feet and a pith helmet and uneaten peach below the table where a glass of water and a cigarette await the bemused lady. Classic example of his unique illustrative style. Signed in pencil bottom right. Numbered 19/225 in pencil bottom left. 

Condition: Minor spotting throughout. Overall very good. 

Overall Size: 31 1/8 x 40 1/2 x 1 in. 

Sight Size: 24 1/2 x 31 in. 

Philippe Henri Noyer was born on June 28th, 1917 in Lyons, France. After a traditional education at the elite Ecole des Roches, Noyer enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Lyon. After graduating he moved to Paris, where he worked in decorative arts and advertising. It was during this time he discovered his talent for oil painting, officially starting his painting career in 1943. That same year, Noyer met the famed Parisian art dealer, Emmanuel David, who would become his main promoter of his work and career after World War II. Noyer produced many portraits, which became his signature work, but he also painted dream figures in rural or maritime settings, compositions that were classical in technique but surreal in concept. In 1947 Noyer held his first one-man show at the Drouant-David Gallery in Paris. In 1949 the gallery consigned twenty of Noyer’s paintings to an American art dealer who had agreed to organize an exhibition of them in the United States. However the American dealer sold the paintings at cost in order to cover a gambling debt to Robert Goldstein, the former President of 20th Century Fox. Goldstein was so taken with the pieces that he distributed them to his friends including Samuel Goldwyn, who sought out Philippe Noyer and introduced him to the culture of the United States West Coast. Noyer and Goldstein formed a lifelong friendship, and in the decades that followed he was commissioned to paint portraits of many celebrities including Elizabeth Taylor, Dinah Shore, and Jean Wallace. From the late 1960s onward Noyer shifted away from portraiture in favor of painting delicately stylized, sophisticated, slim, long-limb ladies, often in quirky situations in various stages of undress. Modernist yet slightly Surrealist, his works are still sought out by collectors long since his death from a heart attack on June 15th, 1985 while visiting friends in Los Angeles, California. 

Minor spotting throughout. Overall very good.