Monique CRAS (1910-2007). "Sur les bords du Niger, Niamey". Tiled gouache on paper, signed lower left and inscribed "Esquisse pour grande toile-achat d'Etat" ("Sketch for large canvas-state purchase"). Sight size: Height : 37 cm - Width : 62 cm Note: Monique Cras entered the Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of 22 and became a pupil of Paul-Albert Laurens and Lucien Simon. She exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1926 and many other Salons, in a style close to Cézanne. In 1938, she obtained a grant from the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français to travel to West Africa, and returned with a number of ethnographic portraits and African landscapes, attracting the interest of the French government, which commissioned several works from her.