André-Léon Vivrel (1886-1976) - Village breton

André-Léon VIVREL (1886-1976)

Breton village

Watercolor on paper
Dimensions of the painting: 32 x 49.5 cm
Signed at the bottom left.
Provenance: Private collection, Paris

Watercolor in very good condition.
Glued paper on thick paper.
Nice new golden frame with plexiglass included.
Dimensions with frame: 60 x 78 cm

Original artwork delivered with invoice and certificate of authenticity.
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André-Léon Vivrel was born in 1886 in Paris. At only 15, he decides to become a painter. He is supported in this path by his mother, whom he describes as his first teacher, and his father, a wine merchant and first prize in drawing in 1870. A student at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, André-Léon Vivrel entered the Académie Julian in 1910. There he studied under Paul Albert Laurens, then attended the workshop of Marcel Baschet and Henri Royer at the École des Beaux-Arts. He rented a studio in Montmartre, at 65 rue Caulaincourt, only eight numbers from Renoir’s studio. His first participation in the Salon des artistes français dates from 1913. Mobilized in 1914, he received the Croix de guerre for heroic conduct in 1917. After the war, he returns to his Montmartre studio. He is awarded an honorable mention at the Salon of 1920 and the State buys the two still lifes he exhibited at the Salon des indépendants. He also presents two portraits of Breton women painted after a stay in Ploumanac’h (Côtes d’Armor). In 1922, Vivrel appears for the first time at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. After receiving the Deldebat de Gonzalva prize in 1932, the following year he obtains a silver medal at the Salon des artistes français with “Le Temps des cerises.” In 1934, Vivrel presents bathers, the first painting in a series of large nudes sent to the Salon until 1943. The culmination of his exploration of the female nude, his “Baigneuses” of 1939 were awarded a gold medal at the Salon des artistes français.
This ultimate reward crowns a silver medal obtained by Vivrel in 1937, at the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques of Paris. The critics unanimously praise his talent and, in 1940, Louis Paillard does not hesitate to write on the front page of the “Petit journal” of May 6, 1940: “André Vivrel, I proclaim, appears to be one of the best in this Salon [of French artists].” The exhibition “Vivrel - recent paintings,” organized by Galerie de Berri in May 1942, illustrates, in 31 paintings, the diversity of genres addressed by Vivrel but it is the landscape that he explores with the most passion. His homeland is the Loiret, where his elder brother Marcel has a second residence in Châtillon-sur-Loire, not far from Champtoceaux. In the aftermath of the Great War, pennyless, he refuges there to paint on site at minimal cost. In spring 1926, Vivrel is again in Brittany, from where he brings back the “Port of Camaret” exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries in 1926. A few years later, in 1934, he returns to the Côtes d'Armor, where he composes seascapes that are as many studies of the sky. Vivrel spends the summer of 1926 in Corsica. There he creates watercolors that are presented, in the autumn, at Galerie Georges Petit and then in New York. Each time, a unanimous critique extols their qualities: “The exhibition of André Vivrel is of a sensitive, refined artist, while remaining broad in his conceptions. His views of Corsica, Brittany and Paris are like his flowers, delicately harmonious” (“La Semaine à Paris,” 12 November 1926, p.
In 1928, he once again travels to the South. Restoring the warm and vibrant light of Provence, he paints “Le port de Saint-Tropez,” exhibited that same year at the Salon des Indépendants. The Mediterranean theme also takes hold at the Salon des Tuileries, where Vivrel presents harbor views and ocean liners, witnesses to a flourishing tourist industry. When Vivrel is not on the road across France, he makes Paris his model. He paints the lanes of Montmartre and the monuments of the capital, such as Notre-Dame Cathedral, which he repeats in a series in the Monet manner. He loves to linger on the banks of the Seine, which offer him numerous unusual vantage points of the city and inspire paintings that evoke the Parisian landscapes of Albert Lebourg. Painting until his last breath, André-Léon Vivrel dies at Bonneville-sur-Touques on June 7, 1976."}