Farm with Big Tree - Jacques Zadig - 1956 - walnut frame

Oil on canvas, signed and dated “Zadig 56” lower right. Presented in a newly fittted wood frame.

This quietly modernist landscape is a fine example of Jacques Zadig’s early work, painted when he was in his mid-twenties. A low farm building with a dark, steeply pitched roof sits tucked beneath the heavy canopy of a great tree. The scene is reduced to a handful of confident planes of colour: pale celadon walls, a single dark window, a slice of blue shadow and, through the open passage, a glimpse of golden field and sky. At right, a luminous lime-green gable rises against the foliage.

The palette is deliberately limited and harmonious. Layered greens, from deep bottle green to soft sage, are set against cool blue, ochre and chalky cream. The tree is built from simple, overlapping patches rather than leaves, and the architecture is stripped of detail. This is the Scandinavian post-Cubist tradition, with echoes of Cézanne, at its most restrained and poetic.

The painting has been newly framed in a slim, walnut wooden frame with a clean profile. Its natural color echoes the earthy undertones of the canvas and sets off the greens, making the work an great fit for a modern Scandinavian or Japandi interior, where it brings calm, depth and a sense of nature to the wall.

Size: 58 x 41,5 cm (with frame)

About the artist:

Jacques Zadig (1930-2023) was a Swedish painter, draughtsman and printmaker, born in Paris as the son of the Swedish sculptor William Zadig. He studied at the Essem School in Malmö, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm, and continued his education through study trips to France, Spain and Italy. His early promise was recognised with the Ellen Trotzig scholarship in 1953, followed by an award from the Skåne Art Association, and he exhibited at Malmö Town Hall, Krognoshuset in Lund and Galerie Leger in Stockholm. His work is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet in Stockholm.