Louis Braquaval

Louis Édouard Joseph Braquaval (24 October 1854, Lille - 19 November 1919, Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme)[1] was a French landscape and cityscape painter.

Street in Front of La Madeleine (c.1910)
The Marketplace in Abbeville (c.1900)

Biography

He was born into a family of wealthy industrialists and later married into another wealthy family. Originally, he established himself as an auctioneer, but his artistic sensibilities soon proved to be greater than his business sense. Thanks to the support of his father-in-law, he was able to pursue his interest in art and study with Eugène Boudin, a family friend,[2] who had to start from scratch as Braquaval had not even been taught how to draw when he was a child.

In 1895, he bought a house in Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, a popular area for painters at that time. Among those whose acquaintance he made was Edgar Degas, who became his good friend and painting companion.[3]

He did not begin exhibiting until 1907, when he showed some landscapes at the Salon. Later, in 1909 and 1910, he also exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and returned to the Paris Salon four years after that. Mostly, however, he established his reputation at regional exhibitions in Arras, Lille and Nantes. He became a Chevalier in the Légion d'honneur in 1914.[4]

By this time, he was in fragile health and painted little; not only for that reason, but also because of the chaos caused by the war. His work was largely forgotten until a fiftieth anniversary retrospective was held at the Kaplan Gallery in London.[2]

References
  1. GeneaNet (some sources give his birth year as 1856 or even 1860)
  2. Biographical notes @ the Schwarz Gallery website.
  3. Odette Braeuener and Bénédicte Pradier-Euttinger, Les peintres de la baie de Somme, autour de l’impressionnisme éditions La Renaissance du Livre, 2001 ISBN 978-2-8046-0554-4
  4. Documentation @ the Base Léonore.

Further reading
  • Pierre Vasselle, Un paysagiste de l'époque post-impressionniste, Louis Braquaval (1854-1919), élève de Boudin, ami de Degas, Vieux-Papiers, Paris, 1961
  • Exhibition Catalog, Louis Braquaval (1854-1919): un peintre impressionniste en Picardie, édition du Musée Boucher-de-Perthes, 2000
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