Lucien Levy-Dhurmer (1865-1953)

Fanny and Jean-Jules Rheims children Pastel on paper signed and dated lower left. Included in the Catalogue Raisonné of the artist. Dimensions : 92 x 76 cm French painter born in Algiers and died in Le Vésinet, he is also a sculptor and symbolist ceramist. He entered the Ecole Communale Supérieure de Dessin et de Sculpture in the 11th arrondissement of Paris on October 21, 1879 and studied under Albert-Charles Wallet and Raphaël Collin, both students of Alexandre Cabanel, as well as Alexandre Vion. While working with Clément Massier in Golfe-Juan, he continued to paint and especially pastel and participated in several exhibitions. He returned to live in Paris in 1895. During this year, he met the poet Georges Rodenbach and painted his portrait. It was through Rodenbach that he had his first solo exhibition in 1896, under the name Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer. This presence at the Georges Petit gallery brought him immediate notoriety, as the gallery was in the habit of organising exhibitions of already recognised artists, as well as very selective international exhibitions. After 1900, he experimented with a diffuse modelling technique with limited and often bluish colours, which he kept until his death, when symbolism was long forgotten. Works in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Louvre, the Musée du Quai Branly and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, etc.