Lucien Weil 1902 1963 - Large Oil Portrait Woman In A Landscape 81x65 Cm

Lucien Weil 1902 1963 - Large Oil  Portrait Woman In A Landscape 81x65 Cm
This work by Lucien Weil was reproduced on the back cover in the catalog for the sale of the Lucien Weil estate in Angers in 1996 where it bears the number 198.
Lucien Weil is a great painter whose work is increasingly recognized, which is well deserved given the quality of his work below his biography. The sale prices vary depending on the subject and the period but each work will have a price. We have often observed prices between 3000 and 5000 euros or even up to more than 30,000 euros in very significant antique fairs.

Lucien Weil or Lucien Weill, born March 10, 1902 in Biesheim and died in Saint-Brieuc on April 3, 1963, is a French painter.

Lucien Weill is the son of Abraham Weill and Elisabeth Heilbronn1.
A student of Jean-Pierre Laurens and Louis Roger2, he competed in 1926 for the Prix de Rome where he won the second second grand prize. (That year there was no First Grand Prix, but two second Grand Prix attributed to Lucien Weil and Alfred Giess, both Alsatians)
In 1930, he married Madeleine Gabrielle Lestienne (1905-1994), painter3. Jean-Pierre Laurens is witness to the wedding. Together, they raised their two daughters, Lisbeth and Claudine, who were often their models. In 1931, the couple won the 2nd and 3rd prizes for illumination4. If Lucien Weil exhibited regularly at the Salon des artistes français from 1925, as well as in various French galleries, he presented himself just as regularly to the Alsatian public. Over the years, in different galleries in Colmar, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Mulhouse as well as at the Maison d'Art Alsacienne and at the Galerie de la Société Industrielle. He also exhibited numerous times at the Galerie Aktuaryus in Strasbourg. These Alsatian exhibitions, with which he sometimes associates his wife Madeleine, are each time large-scale and quality exhibitions presenting between thirty and forty works. Lucien Weil makes it a point of honor not to disappoint his Alsatian audience. In 1934, Lucien Weil obtained a residency scholarship from the Academy of Fine Arts at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. It was the crowning achievement of his efforts which would allow the full development of his art. He stayed in Spain with his wife until the summer of 1935. They both painted numerous paintings. Through his portraits, nudes, landscapes or genre scenes, we feel Lucien Weil closer to life and color.
In the summer of 1939, Lucien and Madeleine Weil were on vacation in Erquy, a seaside resort on the Emerald Coast. It was at this time, September 2, 1939, that the artist was mobilized. Wounded on June 21, 1940, he was taken prisoner of war at Stalag III-A in Luckenwalde, near Berlin. He then worked in watercolor and produced around twenty portraits of his companions in misfortune and scenes from daily life. These watercolors are as many testimonies of life in the Luckenwalde camp and as Paul Cuisinier rightly writes: “They morally supported these same prisoners of war by forcing them to always remain worthy of their image” (“Homage to artist veterans prisoners war", May 7-June 3, 1965 Paul Cuisinier). During this period of imprisonment, the artist also collaborated in the production of a satirical newspaper “Le Masque à gaz. Humorous and not very serious newspaper appearing irregularly twice a month. We find Lucien Weil there through caricatures executed in pen and ink.
In 1941, he was repatriated to the Vichy military hospital. Demobilized in Clermont-Ferrand at the end of July of the same year, he took refuge in Auvergne in the free zone. His wife and daughter Lisbeth join him. He continued his activity as a painter there and worked for various sponsors, notably creating frescoes in churches in the region. From December 17, 1941 to January 1, 1942, he exhibited his paintings, portraits, figures and landscapes from Auvergne, as well as his Stalag watercolors at the Lorenceau Gallery in Vichy. From 1943, when the free zone was abolished, he took a false identity and became Lucien Walon. On several occasions, he changed his address to escape the Nazi regime.
From March 23 to April 3, 1945, he exhibited some of the works created in Auvergne at the Nouvelles Galeries d'Aurillac. In 1945, Lucien Weil exhibited his works alongside those of Léon Hamonet (1877-1953) and André Gagey (1888-1964). Like Lucien Weil, Léon Hamonet and André Gagey are complete artists. All three have a predilection for the views of the port of Erquy which they depict endlessly, sometimes in oil or watercolor. From that moment on, the couple and their two daughters, Lisbeth and Claudine, lived every year in the summer near the port.
Lucien Weil also remains very attached to Alsace. In his paintings, references to his region are his native region are numerous. Whether they are still lifes whose compositional elements are typically Alsatian: Betschdorf crockery, fruits (grapes, quinces, etc.), furniture or portraits, like “L’Alsacienne”, an oil on canvas that he created after the war and which is exhibited today in the council room of the town hall of Biesheim. Lucien Weil established strong ties in the town of Erquy, until his death at the Saint-Brieuc hospital in 1963. On April 3 of that year, at the age of 61, he suffered a heart attack. , he died a few hours later. He is buried in Viroflay, near Paris.
In Biesheim, a street is named after the artist. In fact, at the initiative of the Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Alsace, of which Lucien Weil was a full member of the Fine Arts section since 1956, the former rue des Jews became rue Lucien Weil on September 27, 1964. A ceremony is organized jointly by the municipality of Biesheim and the Academy of Alsace5.
Notes and references
Biesheim archives, birth certificate no. 4, year 1902 (see 192/203) [archive].
The Alsatian-Lorraine of Paris and the departments, French and annexed, of September 5, 1926: Arts, Literature and Sciences. [archive]
Archives of Paris 14th, marriage certificate no. 758, year 1930 (view 16/31) [archive].
Academy of Fine Arts, July 1, 1931: Results of the Roux competitions. [archive]
Caroline Fischer, “A painter from Biesheim Lucien Weil (1902-1963)”, Directory of the historical society of Hardt and Ried, 2012, p. 101-108