Albert Decamps (1862 - 1908) `` Still Life With Pumpkin ''

Albert Décamps, painter, was born in Allery on November 17, 1861. His father, manufacturer and repairer of shuttles, put him in boarding school in Longpré for three years. From his earliest youth, sketching on walls and old planks, he already very skillfully represented animals and figures. He had the good fortune to live in contact with a talented artist: Mr. Thompson father, painter of English origin who came to live in Allery during the summer and who took pleasure in giving advice to the young Décamps in whom he had discovered serious skills. Around 1883, his father introduced him to the great painter Vollon, who was staying in Mers. Guessing in Décamps a future talented painter, he took a keen interest in him. According to his advice, Décamps remains in the country, paints what surrounds him, what moves him. Yet Thompson offered him generous and cordial hospitality from Paris. Décamps can thus follow the artistic movement and benefit from useful encouragement. In 1886, he exhibited for the first time. At a weaver was noticed. In 1888, he was appointed as a pupil of Vollon. In 1898, he married Mademoiselle Vollon, his master's daughter. A great ease, otherwise fortune had come. He settles in Paris. Yet it is the Picardy countryside that inspires almost all of his works. He bought a retreat at Allery, which he took pleasure in embellishing. Happiness was there in the picturesque valley where Allery nestles. It was there that he died on July 18, 1908. At the salon in 1895, he obtained the honorable mention with the communion of the orphan; in 1900 he won a medal; in 1905 he was put out of competition. Following his wish, without vain official pomp, a moving procession of relatives and friends led him through the streets of the country, from the church he had never ceased to attend to the small cemetery that he had painted as a child. . A tribute was paid to him by the newspaper of Saint Petersburg. Fifty of his paintings were exhibited in Saint Riquier, from March 27 to May 27, 1985, from the museums of Amiens, Abbeville, Berck and private collections.