Augustin Burlet, The Alsatian Woman (circa 1920)

AUGUSTIN BURLET (1892 Châlons-sur-Saône - 1953 Lyon)
L'Alsacienne
Circa 1920
Oil on cardboard
35 x 27.5 cm
Unsigned
Annotated on the back: Augustin Burlet 1920

Born in Châlons-sur-Saône in 1892, Augustin Burlet grew up in the Croix-Rousse and studied at the Ecole des beaux-arts de Lyon with Adolphe Louis Castex-Desgrange. After his studies, he left for Lausanne to do an apprenticeship with a Swiss glassmaker. After the war, he established a stained glass workshop in the Croix-Rousse and several churches in Lyon and its surroundings are enriched by his works.

A great artist, Burlet was also a great patriot wounded several times, once near death, during the Great War, and this half-portrait, half-allegory of an Alsatian woman clearly meant a lot to him. A celebration of the liberation of Alsace, the face of the Alsatian woman is not triumphalist, but proud and sad.