Keuleyan-Lafon – Sunset on the Coast of Agay

Jean Keuleyan-Lafon
(1886 Paris – 1973)

SUNSET ON THE COAST OF AGAY

Painted in the 1910s
Oil on canvas
38 x 54 cm

Signed lower right: Keuleyan

Jean Lafon was born into a family of artists. He was the son of the church painter Jacques-Émile Lafon and the grandson of the history painter François Lafon. To avoid being confused with his father, he called himself Keuleyan-Lafon or simply Keuleyan and worked exclusively as a landscape and marine painter.

He specialized in picturesque sunsets and moonlit coastlines. His paintings are exhibited in French museums and regularly trade on the art market. They often depict the dramatic coastline near Agay on the French Riviera with its red rocks, painted by all the great Impressionists (including Monet, Guillaumin, and Valtat).

The fact that the color of the rocks in “Sunset on the Coast of Agay” tends toward violet is due to the evening or moonlight. This painting, signed Keuleyan in the lower right, was probably created around 1910, but certainly before the First World War. After the war, in which he was captured by the Germans, the artist signed his work Jean Lafon.