Laprade, Still Life With Bust, Oil On Canvas

Pierre Laprade (1975-1931)
Still life with bust
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right
65 x 46 cm

Born in Narbonne in 1875, Pierre Laprade attended Antoine Bourdelle's studio from 1896. Although dedicated to the magistracy, the sculptor encourages him on the artistic path. Laprade entered the Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he quickly abandoned for the Carrière academy. In reality, Laprade trained alone, especially at the Louvre where he admired Poussin, Le Lorrain, Delacroix and Manet. In 1900, Ambroise Vollard bought his first work from him. The same year, he met Henri Matisse and the future Fauves with whom he exhibited in 1905 at the Salon d'Automne of which he was a founding member. He participated in the Salon des Indépendants of 1901 and was the subject of a personal exhibition at Ambroise Vollard.

Touched by the Impressionists, he took from them his vaporous atmosphere, with shapes diluted in a soft light, often worked in full paste, to which he remained faithful throughout his life. His muted tones, his refined grays and blues, his faded roses which harmonize delicately in his landscapes, his still lifes and his figures of women and flowers, give him a special place in painting, apart concerns of the Fauves, the Cubists and the Abstractists. In 1906, Laprade traveled to Italy and Holland, and exhibited collectively at Berthe Weill in Paris, then at the Armory Show in New York and Chicago in 1913.

A founding member of the Salon des Tuileries, he participated there until 1930 In 1923 and 1925, Laprade executed a series of etchings for Vollard, which were used to illustrate Les Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine, then painted the series of Churches and Cathedrals. In 1926, he participated in the exhibition of Young Contemporary Painting at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and the Galerie Katia Granoff. Until 1930, he illustrated literary works such as Vers et Prose by Paul Valéry or Un amour de Swann by Marcel Proust.

His works are held in public collections including the Louvre Museum, the Center Pompidou, the Petit-Palais, the Cognac Museum, the Orsay Museum, the Troyes Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon