Maria-Mela Muter, French-Polish, 1876 - 1967- Landschaft; oil on board, signed lower right, 33 x 41cm (ARR) (VAT charged on hammer price) Provenance: Sotheby's, London, 19 October 1988, lot 283; Private Collection, London Note: The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Mrs Urszula Lazowski. Mela Muter, the pseudonym of Maria Melania Mutermilch, is one of the most significant Polish Jewish female painters in Paris in the early 20th century. She studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi under Etienne Tournés. In Paris, Muter swiftly built a reputation as a portrait painter and exhibited her work regularly, first at the Paris Salon in 1902, and subsequently at the Salon des Indépendants, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Tuileries as well as the Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes. During her early years in Paris she was associated with the Polish elite Leopold Gottlieb, Wladyslaw Reymont, Leopold Sraff, Stefan Żeromski, and Henri Barbusse, as well as other artists Auguste Peret, Diego Rivera and Rainer Maria Rilke, who would become one of her closest friends. During the Second World War, Muter went into hiding in the South of France, from this point on she created these Fauvist landscapes of the area, such as the present painting. Please refer to department for condition report