Oil On Panel, Signed Gustave Hervigo, Painter Of The Navy, Art Deco, Brittany, Douarnenez

Old & large oil on panel.
Very beautiful view of Douarnenez showing the Sainte Helene chapel.
Work of the marine painter Gustave Hervigo.
Painting exhibited in 1926;
87cm x 73cm
Original frame.



Gustave Adolphe Hervigo is a painter born in Rambouillet on October 27, 1896, died in Rambouillet on May 21, 1993. Biography Gustave Hervigo's childhood was divided between his hometown of Rambouillet, where from a very early age he worked alongside his father as a saddler, and summer holidays in Douarnenez. Interested in painting from a young age, self-taught although receiving advice from the Rambouillet painter Henri Laigneau, it was however in the manufacture of leather goods that after the First World War, married and having settled in Paris, he successfully invested himself, working for the houses of Haute Couture[1]. Still painting however, Gustave opened himself up to Parisian exhibitions by presenting a painting at the Salon des Indépendants in 1925 (an event to which he remained faithful since his name is still listed among the exhibitors in 1984[2]). He became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1930. Forced to go into hiding, because he was Jewish, during the Second World War, Gustave Hervigo was generously welcomed, for several years from 1941, by a couple from Videix (Haute-Vienne). Forced to leave his courageous hosts in a hurry following a denunciation, he spent a long time but in vain searching for their descendants[3]. It was after the war that Gustave became exclusively a painter, forming a close friendship with the sculptor Jean-Graves (1897-2000) as well as the painters Georges Delplanque (1903-1999) and Louis-Édouard Toulet (1892-1967)[4]. The French Equatorial Africa travel grant awarded to him in 1948 by the Overseas Fine Arts Society made him a traveling painter: "Tatave-la-bougeotte", as this is the nickname he would earn there[5], he undertook seventeen trips around the world between 1949 and 1981, centered on black Africa until 1961: to Chad (1949, 1951, 1953), to Gabon, notably Libreville and Lambaréné (1950), to the Central African Republic (1954), ten months in Cameroon (1955), returns to Chad (1957, 1959, 1961), Madagascar and the island of Réunion (1963-1964), New Caledonia, the New Hebrides - today Vanuatu - and Polynesia (1966-1968), Ethiopia and the French territory of the Afars and the Issas - today Djibouti - (1969), Norway (1970), Niger (1972), Ivory Coast (1974 and 1976), Russia (1975)[6], the world tour on the helicopter-carrying cruiser Jeanne d'Arc in 1981[1]. He was a member of the board of directors of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in the painting section in 1977. Living for a time at 12, rue Jean-Ferrandi in the 6th arrondissement of Paris in the evening of his life, he bequeathed in 1990 his entire studio collection to the town of Rambouillet where he died in May 1993 and where a square now bears his name