Eller (lucien Roudier Dit) "woman With Cigarette" (born In Marseille In 1894)

Watercolor by Lucien Eller representing a woman with a cigarette signed lower right, size 55cm x 40cm. Lucien Roudier, born January 2, 1894 in Marseille, died March 16, 1940 in Paris, is a French artist, painter and illustrator, who signed his works with the pseudonym Eller (from his initials LR Painter, illustrator and decorator, Lucien Eller was the painter of nightlife, bars, nightclubs, jazz clubs of Marseille, then of Paris from the 1920s. He depicts the atmosphere of the night in a very expressive style, close to the expressionists, in the tradition of the painters Kees Van Dongen and Georges Rouault, but also of Marcel Leprin, from Marseille like him and who approaches very similar themes. Laureate of the Société des Beaux-Arts of Marseille where he was born, he came to Paris after the First World War where he would witness the Parisian nights of the Roaring Twenties. Illustrator, he contributed in Marseille to the magazine Spectator, to the women's pages of the Soleil de Marseille, and in Paris to the magazines Le Rire and Fantasio. As a painter, he exhibited in Paris at the Devambez gallery, the Georges Petit gallery and the Salons des Indépendants. A former soldier, he created the Salon des artistes anciens combattantes, peintres et sculpteurs, which the President of the Republic inaugurated each year on the banks of the Seine. Decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1938, he was also one of the founders of the Club des Marseillais de Paris. He was classified as a freemason by the Vichy government. Having died prematurely in March 1940 in his studio at 5, rue Clauzeldans in lower Montmartre following a kidney removal, his work remained in the shadows for a long time, despite a retrospective of his work in Marseille, at the Jouvène gallery, in 1941. In 1956, following the death of his patron Camille de Rhynal, a sale organized in Nice of more than 70 of his works, prefaced by Paul Reboux, brought him back into the spotlight with an audience of discerning dealers and collectors. Although he devoted himself at the end of his career to works in a fantastical style and inspired by Spain, notably Don Quixotes, it is his first period, in which he illustrated the life of dives, jazz clubs, musette balls or red-light districts, which remains the most current and original.