Lucien Roudier alias Eller
20s bar scene
Watercolor on paper
Signed lower left
Dimensions: 48 x 63cm
with frame 64 x 80 cm
Sold
Painter, illustrator and decorator, Lucien Eller was the painter of nightlife, bars and jazz clubs. He depicts the atmosphere of the night in an expressive and graphic style, between illustration and painting, in the tradition of the painters Van Dongen and Rouault.
Winner of the Société des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, he moved to Paris after the First World War. In the capital, he exhibited at the Devambez gallery and at the Salons des Indépendants and the Salon des Humoristes.
Paris makes the painter the witness of its twirling nights of the Roaring Twenties. He paints the small world of the city seated in cafes, whose vain conversations evaporate in the clouds of cigarettes and the mist of their glass of wine. The women and the man, elegantly dressed, pass the time. Note the attention to colors and the lively gesture of the draftsman, who hatches certain surfaces to indicate the shadow and condenses the simplicity of the faces into a few lines.
Died prematurely, his work remained in the shadows for about twenty years. In 1956, a sale was organized in Nice; it brings together more than 70 of his works brings him to light with an audience of knowledgeable dealers and collectors.
Bibliography :
• Emmanuel Bénézit, “Dictionary of painters, sculptors, designers and engravers”, t. 4, Gründ Bookshop, 1976, p. 144
