Charles Laloue, a theatrical decorator, married Marie Eudoxie Lambert in Paris at Batignolles on December 29, 1853. Eugène Galien-Laloue was born on December 11 of the following year in Montmartre, on Rue Léonie, and was baptized the following January in the Saint-Pierre parish of Montmartre.
He studied under Léon Germain Pelouse (1838-1891), a painter from the Barbizon School, whose influence he felt but never fully embraced.
After his father's death in 1870, Eugène had to leave school to find work, being the eldest of nine boys. His mother placed him with a notary. By falsifying his age, he enlisted to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1874, living on Rue de Clignancourt, he was recruited by the French railway company to draw the layout of train lines from Paris to provincial stations. He took advantage of this to paint the surrounding landscapes and neighborhoods of Paris, producing a significant number of gouaches while carefully respecting the perspective of the buildings. He varied the tone of the sky, the appearance of trees, and the lighting according to the seasons, animating the scenes with figures and particularly enjoying the effects of wet sidewalks under rain or snow. His work is also closely tied to the landscapes of rural villages in the Île-de-France region. In 1874, he stayed in Fontainebleau, painting sunrises and sunsets, as well as farmyard scenes in Samois-sur-Seine, alongside Charles Jacque and Léon Dupuy, an artist who never made a career but whose name Eugène Galien-Laloue adopted as a pseudonym, giving it renewed recognition in artistic circles. On Butte Montmartre, he painted "La Foire de Montmartre" at Place Pigalle, as well as the construction site of the Sacré-Cœur. He used many pseudonyms, the most common being L Dupuy, Kerminguy, Lenoir, Galieny, and Lievin.
In 1879, he married Flore Bardin (1861-1887), who gave birth to their son, Fernand, on July 3, 1880. In 1892, he married for a second time to his first wife's sister, Ernestine Bardin, who gave him a daughter, Flore Marie Agnès, on February 4, 1893. That same year, he worked at the Bateau-Lavoir, but his solitary nature did not fit in with this environment. At the outbreak of World War I, he was not mobilized due to his previous enlistment in 1870 and his age, but he created numerous drawings and watercolors of military scenes in 1914. His daughter left the family home after her marriage in 1919, and Ernestine Bardin died in 1925. He then married the third sister of his previous wives, Claire Bardin, in 1930. Widowed again in 1933, he moved in with his daughter Flore in 1935. In 1940, he fled to Bordeaux, unable to paint due to a broken arm.
He painted landscapes of Normandy, Seine-et-Marne, Marseille, Italy, and Venice. The artistic output of this painter, both under his own name and pseudonyms, was vast, and his commercial success attracted imitators whose pastiches are common in the art market.
He had two studios in Montmartre: one at 4 Rue Ravignan in 1877, and the second at 24 Rue Houdon, where he worked in 1886. In 1906, he settled in Fontainebleau.
Eugène Galien-Laloue died on April 18, 1941, at his daughter's country house in Chérence (Val-d'Oise) and was buried in the local cemetery.
Exhibitions
Salon des artistes français:
- 1877: Two paintings, including "En Normandie," and two gouaches
- 1878: Two paintings
- 1879: Two paintings
- 1887: "Les Bords du Loing," gouache
- 1889: "Bernay; Bords de la Meuse," gouaches
- 1904: "Le Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle"
- 1905: "La Porte Saint-Denis"
- 1906: "Place Pigalle"
- 1907: "Boulevard Magenta; Église Saint-Médard"
- 1908: "Boulevard de la Madeleine; Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle"
- 1909: "Place de la Bastille; Porte Saint-Martin"
- 1911: "Quai de l'hôtel de ville"
- 1914: "Marché aux fleurs à la Madeleine"
Public Collections
United States
- Huntington, Huntington Museum of Art
France
- Paris, Musée Carnavalet: "L'église Saint-Augustin sous la neige"
- Auvers-sur-Oise, musée Daubigny
- La Rochelle, musée des Beaux-Arts
- Louviers, musée de Louviers
- Mulhouse, musée des Beaux-Arts
- Reims, musée des Beaux-Arts