Alfred Lombard
With spontaneity and virtuosity, Alfred Lombard portrays a young woman in a landscape. Dressed in a pink dress and straw hat, the painter captures her amid lush Mediterranean vegetation.
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated 1909 lower right
Dimensions: 65 x 50 cm
With frame: 87 x 72 cm
Price upon request
” Giulia Pentcheff: “Creating emotional shocks using reduced forms and pure color , Alfred Lombard (1884-1973)
Alfred Lombard, “le fauve provençal”, an artist in perpetual evolution.
Alfred Lombard, who vehemently refused academic teaching, used great freedom in his stylistic research. With his personal resources shielding him from financial need, he was able to pursue theoretical and practical research into the treatment of color and pictorial matter throughout his life. He developed an original relationship with color and a pictorial energy derived from the Fauvist movement of which he was a part.
Our painting bears witness to this. Here, there are no preparatory studies; the splashes of color are thrown onto the canvas without preparation.
Shapes are reduced to the essential; the young woman, her barely sketched face and the vegetation surrounding her come to life on the canvas. The use of black lines in places allows the light to diffuse further.
The female figure, an essential theme in Alfred Lombard’s work.
In addition to landscapes and scenes of life in his native Provence, Alfred Lombard was also a painter of women, with highly expressive nudes and portraits.
In our picture, colors soft contrasts magnify this feminine portrait. Visit The soft pink of the dress, combined with the turquoise green of the succulents at the back, illuminate the canvas and add a touch of femininity. The greenery surrounding the model, with its lovely gradation of soft greens, brings a freshness to the canvas.
Biography
Painter Alfred Lombard was born in Marseille and died in Toulon. His artistic career took him from Fauvism to easel painting and monumental decoration.
Born into a wealthy family, he first studied literature and history at the University of Aix-en-Provence, before turning to a career in art. He enrolled at the Beaux Arts in Marseille.
Disappointed by an academic and hierarchical form of teaching, he soon left the institution and joined Alphonse Moutte’s studio as an assistant. He perfected this “on-the-job” apprenticeship by visiting museums at his leisure
From an early age, he asserted his freedom and independence in artistic expression, and his desire to change things.
He worked to ensure that Provence would finally shine on an artistic level.
Easel paintings
From 1905 to 1928, Alfred Lombard produced almost exclusively easel paintings, aesthetically close to the Fauvism of the years 1907 to 1910.
In 1906, the Colonial Exhibition acted as a formidable catalyst, creating encounters and emulation between artists from different fields.
The same year saw the creation of the Société du Salon de Provence, a structure designed to offer Marseilles annual international exhibitions of painting, sculpture and decorative arts.
Among the artists taking part in the Salon, illustrious names such as Carrière, Rodin, Henri Martin and Cézanne drew admiring local painters in their wake: Astruc, Audibert, Barret, Cabasson, Carrera, Casile, Cauvet, Chabaud, Giraud, Germain, Ravaisou, André Verdilhan…
However, despite this dynamic spirit, the 1907 exhibition was not followed by other events.
In addition to his local involvement, Lombard took part in the Paris Salons, where he distinguished himself as a talented representative of the younger generation of Fauve artists. He exhibited his work in the capital’s most prestigious galleries, and had two one-man shows: at Rosenberg in 1914 and at Druet in 1925.
After exhibiting his work at the Salon de Automne in 1907 and the Salon de Paris in 1910, he and his lifelong friend Pierre Girieud organized an exhibition of Lombard’s work, the Salon de mai de Marseille in 1912 and 1913 in their shared studio at no. 12 quai de Rive-Neuve on Marseille’s Vieux-Port.
From easel painting to murals
From 1928 to1938, Alfred Lombard’s major works were large-scale civil and religious decors.
This change of scale in his work was facilitated by the construction of a private mansion in Boulogne Billancourt, with a gigantic workshop, whose architect was Pierre Patout.
From 1925 onwards, he worked with the architect on the layout and design of interior decors for the large liners of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique . This collaboration reached its apogee in 1935 with the Normandie liner, an undisputed and unrivalled masterpiece of French Art Deco in the 1930s.
The artist died in Toulon in 1973.
Rare integrity
Why isn’t such an artist better known? Perhaps because Alfred Lombard always refused to allow his paintings to be marketed during his lifetime. For him, painting came before everything else. An integrity that endears him even more.
Bibliography
– Exhibition “Alfred Lombard (1884-1973)” at the Centre de la Vieille Charité in Marseille from October 17 to November 28, 1987
– Denis Coutagne, Bruno Ely, Jean-Roger Soubiran et al, Peintres de la couleur en Provence : 1875-1920, Marseille, Office Régional de la Culture Provence-Alpes-côte d’Azur, 1995,
– Giulia Pentcheff, Alfred Lombard (1884-1973), Editions Galerie Alexis Pentcheff, 2019
Museums
– Marseille :
. fine arts museum
. Cantini museum
– Saint-Tropez, Annonciade Museum
– Toulon, Musée d’art de Toulon: Studio window.
– Le Havre, Museum of Fine Arts
– Paris, Center Pompidou
Source
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lombard_(painter)
https://www.galeriepentcheff.fr/fr/peintre-alfred-lombard
