Louis Valtat (1869 -1952) Original Drawing With Certificate Of Authenticity Circa 1908

Louis Valtat (1869 -1952) Original drawing made in black chalk representing Jean, the son of Louis Valtat, around 1908/1909

Signed with the monogram at the bottom right, this work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the association of friends of Louis Valtat and will be included in the catalog of the work of Louis Valtat.
(Louis Valtat Archives: 2371/D)

Presented framed under glass, dimensions including frame: 53 x 45 centimeters

Without frame 33 x 25 centimeters

Biography:

Louis Valtat entered the École nationale des Beaux Arts in 1888. His two teachers, Boulanger and Lefèvre, also gave courses at the Académie Julian. He thus completed his training in this free academy attended by Bonnard, Ker Xavier-Roussel, Albert André…

Louis Valtat had a certain influence on the painters of his generation. He will lead them out of the Academy to find themselves gathered at the Independents; among them, Maurice Denis and Bonnard. He exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants of 1893.
He rubbed shoulders with the Nabis supported by the Natanson brothers in La Revue Blanche. Valtat exhibited woodcuts and published prints. He participated, with Albert André and Toulouse-Lautrec, in the creation of the sets of the Terracotta Chariot, a Sanskrit drama performed in 1895 at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre de Lugné-Poe.

The works of the Parisian period were followed by the colorful views and scenes of the Arcachon Basin that Valtat sent to the Salon des Indépendants of 1896.

Then came the Agay period (1899-1915) where our painter bought a villa suspended in the valley of red porphyry. From 1900, Vollard became his official dealer.
The effects of the sun on the shores of the Mediterranean became the preferred motifs of his work. He visited Signac in Saint Tropez and Renoir, who had settled in Cannes. The coasts of the Midi, like those of Normandy, where he was from, provided the artist with the opportunity to renew the lessons of his masters and to inaugurate a new relationship with light and color. This research triumphed at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, where Valtat exhibited with Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, and the other Fauves so named by Louis Vauxcelles.
In 1906, Vollard suggested to Valtat, Bonnard, Maillol, Rouault, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, etc., that they decorate the tin-glazed earthenware of the ceramist André Metthey. Valtat excelled in this ornamental work (curvaceous polychrome silhouettes on a white background). At a time when his painted work was shown abroad and the Russian collector Ivan Morosoff acquired several of his paintings (kept in the collections of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg), Vollard dedicated an exhibition to him in 1909. In 1927, after having purchased two of his works, the State thanked him for his participation in the promotion of French art abroad by naming him Knight of the Legion of Honor.

After the Second World War, he joined the studio on Avenue de Wagram. He was blind but continued to paint lively still lifes of flowers and fruit against a backdrop of drapery. He exhibited in Paris (Galerie de l'Elysée, Galerie Charpentier, Galerie Durand-Ruel), in New York at the Whitney Museum in 1947. At the Salon d'Automne in 1852, a few months after his death, the critic René Domergue and the painter René Demeurisse paid tribute to him.