Decorative Ceramic Plate Depicting Montmartre, Signed L. Bemelans, Tapis Vert Vallauris, circa 1970

This decorative ceramic plate presents a hand-painted view of Montmartre executed with the confident, loose brushwork characteristic of the best post-war French studio ceramics. The scene captures the essence of the celebrated Parisian hilltop district: the white domes of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica rise above a foreground of streets, rooftops and the greenery of a tree, the whole rendered in a palette of soft blue-greys, terracotta, yellow and green washes that gives the image the spontaneous quality of a painted sketch.

The plate is the work of L. Bemelans, an artist-decorator who worked at the Tapis Vert pottery in Vallauris — the southern French town near Cannes that became, from the late 1940s onwards, one of the most important centres of studio ceramics in France. Picasso's celebrated collaboration with Vallauris's Madoura pottery from 1947 brought international attention to the town, and in the decades that followed, numerous independent artists and potteries — including Tapis Vert — produced work reflecting the vivid, sun-warmed aesthetic of the Côte d'Azur.

The Montmartre subject creates a charming dialogue between the two poles of French artistic culture: the great bohemian hill in Paris, mythologised by generations of painters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Utrillo, here interpreted through the ceramic medium of the sunny south. The result is a hybrid — Parisian in subject, southern French in manner and material — that speaks to the breadth of the post-war French decorative imagination.

Marked "Made in France" and signed by the artist on the reverse, the plate is in good decorative condition. At 23 cm in diameter and 4 cm deep, it is well suited for display on a stand, hung on a wall, or as part of a collection of French studio ceramics.