André Eugène Costilhes (1865-1940) Pensive Young Woman, Drawing

André Eugène Costilhes (1865-1940) 
A Pensive young woman, portrait drawing
pencil on paper
29.5 x 22.5 cm (view)
In good condition, except some traces of stains
Framed : 55.5 x 41.5 cm (vintage frame, minor defects, including some losses in the right middle border)

This drawing, which I had framed in an antique frame with an original passe-partout, bears the stamp of the studio of André Eugène Costilhes in the lower right-hand corner, which is now hidden. 

André Eugène Costilhes, born on 8 April 1865 in Cunlhat (Puy-de-Dôme) and died on 1 September 1940 in Pontchartrain (Yvelines), was a French painter and decorator.
Born into an extremely modest Auvergne family, he was quickly noticed for his talent as a draughtsman. With the active support of the mayor of Cunlhat, Edmond Guyot-Dessaigne, a future minister, he left for Paris in 1883 at the age of 18, with a departmental grant. He attended drawing classes for adults run by the City of Paris and evening classes at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs. After doing his voluntary military service in Clermont-Ferrand, he went back to Paris to study at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, having come first in the competitive examination. He won numerous medals and awards.
Having obtained certificates of aptitude for teaching drawing, he was appointed as a teacher in Marseille in 1892. He married Jeanne Lafont, his pupil, who also became a painter and exhibited at several Salons. He settled permanently in Paris in 1896. At first, he earned a living doing decorative painting (public buildings, private mansions, shops, châteaux, churches). He worked with his master Eugène Grasset to decorate the pavilions at the 1900 Universal Exhibition. At the same time, he was a drawing teacher and a drawing inspector. Whatever his professional activities at the time, he never stopped drawing and painting throughout his life.
Jeanne Lafont died in 1913. In 1915, he married Anna Fontaine, with whom he had three children. From the early 1920s, and especially after his retirement in 1930, he spent more and more of his time in Pontchartrain (Yvelines), where he had acquired a small house. He died there on 1 September 1940.

His artistic training began in Auvergne as a young self-taught artist. Then, in Paris, he studied with Eugène Grasset and Alphonse Cornet, before going on to the Beaux-Arts, where he was trained in academic painting. His teachers included Léon Bonnat, Luc-Olivier Merson, Pierre-Victor Galland and Gustave Boulanger. However, he soon freed himself from the straitjacket of academicism and followed in the footsteps of the Impressionists, favouring painting on the motif in the open air. A protean artist, he drew and painted a wide range of subjects (landscapes, monuments, street scenes, seascapes, portraits, academic nudes, etc.), using a variety of techniques that he mastered (oil, watercolour, gouache, pastel, charcoal, sanguine, acrylic, ink, etc.). A remarkable portraitist and excellent landscape painter, his sanguine drawings, of female nudes in particular, also attracted the attention of art critics. He criss-crossed the districts of Paris and frequently travelled outside the capital, mainly to Auvergne, Île-de-France, Brittany and Normandy, all places where he set up his easel.
He exhibited at the Salon des artistes français in 1891, 1896, 1903, 1905, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1921 and 1932; at the Salon des indépendants in 1903, 1907 and 1934; and at the Salon d'automne in 1903. He also exhibited at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in 1892, the Salon de Nantes in 1904, 1905, 1906 and 1907, the Salon du Centre in 1905, 1907 and 1934, and various other lesser-known Salons. Alongside his participation in the Salons, he exhibited in the two famous galleries that promoted the Impressionists, the Durand-Ruel gallery (in 1902) and the Georges Petit gallery (in 1903), as well as in the P. Hénaut (1930) and the Galerie des Champs-Élysées (1937).
The State acquired several of his works: in 1907, a large oil on canvas ‘Coin de village aux environs de Clermont-Ferrand’, which is in the Musée d'Art Roger-Quilliot in Clermont-Ferrand; an ink drawing ‘Vue de Beaumont’, kept in the Musée du Louvre; an oil painting ‘Paysage’, attributed to the Musée Francisque Mandet in Riom; an oil painting ‘Le pont Marie et Saint-Gervais, la Seine au printemps’, deposited with the Mairie d'Ermont in 1936. The Tananarive museum received one of his paintings, ‘Ploughing’.  
The artist was also a keen photographer, and produced several hundred glass plates, some of which are devoted to the Auvergne region and are held in the photo library of the Archives Départementales du Puy-de-Dôme, and others, on the capital and the surrounding area, in the Archives de Paris.