Lucien Seevagen Paimpol, Low Tide Oil On Canvas

Paimpol, low tide oil on canvas laid down on cardboard signed lower right.

Lucien Seevagen remains today an artist sought after by amateurs for his many views of the Breton coast and of course Bréhat where he settled in the 1920s. Trained at the School of Decorative Arts, his talent was exercised in first in the field of etching before blossoming fully in painting, alternating with the same prodigality landscapes or bouquets of flowers. Familiar with institutions, he exhibited in 1907 at the Salon des artistes français then at the Independents and at the Salon d'Automne while benefiting from numerous presentations at the Marcel Bernheim gallery. Lucien Seevagen arrives in convalescence on the island of Bréhat after the First World War, where he was gassed. In 1920, while maintaining a studio in Montparnasse, the painter and his wife settled permanently in Brittany. His workshop, located above Kerpont, offers him one of the most beautiful views of the island of Bréhat. In 1921, Seevagen was recognized across the Atlantic, bought by five museums: a Nice landscape by the painter then entered the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, another "Nice Market" at the Indianapolis Museum, a "Port of Nice" again at the French Institute in New York, a still life at the Brooklyn Museum, a Parisian landscape at the Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. With Émile Aubry, André Devambez, and Paul-Albert Laurens, he participated in the first collective exhibition of French painters in Canada in 1924, under the patronage of the government of Quebec. In 1923, Seevagen exhibited at the Salon de la Nationale. The Georges Petit gallery exhibited him in Paris in April 1924, and the Druet gallery also in 1927. In 1929, he painted the portrait of his Bréhatin neighbour, the sculptor André Vermare, Rome prize for sculpture. The Bernheim Jeune gallery included Seevagen in a group exhibition in July 1930. The same year, the State bought its Moulin à mer à l'île de Bréhat produced eight years earlier and attributed it to the National Museum of Modern Art in 1931. In January 1932, the magazine Art et Décoration provides a first retrospective on his work. His submission to the Salon d'Automne was also noticed in 1934. In 1935, the Barreiro gallery in Paris exhibited him and published a catalog. That same year, "Le Temps" saluted the landscape of Seevagen exhibited at the Indépendants.