Louis BERTHOMME St ANDRE Coquetry Oil on canvas signed

Louis BERTHOMME St ANDRE (1905/1977)

“Coquettery”.

Oil on canvas signed lower left.

61x47 cm

Museums: National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, Angoulême Museum, Sorensen collection, Prints Cabinet of the National Library of France, Paris.

Louis Berthomme Saint-André, born February 4, 1905 in Barbery (Oise), and died October 1, 1977 in Paris, was a French painter, lithographer and illustrator. Louis Berthomme Saint-André spent his early childhood in Saintes, and entered as student architect with Georges Naud, responsible for the historical monuments of the Lower Charente (now Charente-Maritime) then, in 1921, he was a student of Fernand Cormon and Jean-Paul Laurens at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. Silver medal at the Salon of French artists where he exhibited from 1924 to 1929, he also obtained a grant from the government of Algeria. He was awarded the Abd-el-Tif Prize in 1925 and was then the youngest resident of the villa in Algiers. Friend of Jean Launois, in addition to his recognized portraits, he painted Algiers and the Kasbah. His studies of women recall those of Eugène Delacroix, but if his luminous inspiration is due to the Algerian sun, his touch is more Cézanne than purely orientalist. He left Algeria in 1928, to return there in 1931. Author of numerous illustrations and posters, he painted in particular, in addition to his Algerian canvases, landscapes of Haute-Provence and Île-de-France. He is considered the most modernist of the Abd-el-Tif painters of his generation. He drew erotic illustrations for works by Paul Verlaine, Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Alfred de Musset, Jean-Louis Miège, etc. Like André Hamburg, he entered the Resistance, and collaborated on Vaincre. He traveled to sub-Saharan Africa in 1970, to Senegal as an artistic cooperator. He died suddenly at his Parisian home on October 1, 1977.

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