Zoum Walter(|1902 - 1974). Pastel. “luceram”. 1929.

Gilded wooden baguette frame (wear from use). Frame dimensions: 44 x 36 cm.
Pastel dimensions: 32 x 27 cm. Located, dated and monogrammed lower right.
Provenance: Sale of the artist's studio in 2006 (stamp on the back).
Juliette Pauline Isidorine Van den Eeckhoudt, known as Zoum Walter, is a Franco-Belgian painter, pastellist and sculptor born in Ixelles in 1902. She owes her curious first name Zoum to her childish way of saying hello (bezoum) in Flemish. Born into a family of artists, Zoum grew up in a very rich cultural environment. Her father, grandfather and maternal great-grandfather were painters. Among her parents' friends were members of the Bloomsburry group (Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey and the English translator of André Gide, Dorothy Bussy-Strachey.) In her childhood, Zoum met Gide, Valery and Roger Martin du Gard. In this stimulating atmosphere, Zoum painted her first pastels at the age of 14, in the middle of the First World War. When peace returned, Zoum turned to music and perfected her piano playing in Brussels with Marguerite Laanen. Between 1922 and 1923, she exchanged musical correspondence with André Gide. He taught her musical transposition. However, it was to painting that she decided to devote her life in July 1923. In 1928, she married François Walter, whom she had met three years earlier. The couple lived in Paris on Rue Molitor, from 1929 and Zoum Walter began to have solo exhibitions, both in Brussels and in Paris. The couple had a daughter, Sylvie, born in 1936 and who died too early in 1958. Zoum Walter exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne, the Salon des Tuileries, not to mention the Salon des Femmes Peintres and the Salon des Indépendants.
Zoum Walter's works are exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Several of his paintings can be admired at the MUDO, the Musée de l'Oise in Beauvais.