André-Léon Vivrel (1886-1976) - Marine en bretagne

André-Léon VIVREL (1886-1976)

Mariner in Brittany

Watercolor on paper
Painting dimensions: 26 x 33 cm
Signed bottom left.
Provenance: Private collection, Paris

Watercolor in very good condition.
Paper mounted on thick paper.
Beautiful new gilded frame with plexiglass INCLUDED
Dimensions with frame: 54 x 65 cm

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André-Léon Vivrel was born in 1886 in Paris. At only 15, he decided to become a painter. He was 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 Louis-le-Grand high school, André-Léon Vivrel entered the Julian Academy in 1910. There he studied under Paul Albert Laurens, then frequented the studios of Marcel Baschet and Henri Royer at the École des Beaux-Arts. He rented a studio in Montmartre, at 65 rue Caulaincourt, just eight numbers away from Auguste Renoir’s. 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 returned to his Montmartre studio. He was awarded an honorable mention at the 1920 Salon and the State bought the two still lifes he exhibited at the Salon des indépendants. He also presented two portraits of Breton women painted after a stay in Ploumanac'h (Côtes-du-Armor). In 1922, Vivrel appeared for the first time at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. After receiving the Deldebat prize of Gonzalva in 1932, he obtained, the following year, a silver medal at the Salon des artistes français with Le Temps des cerises. In 1934, Vivrel presented bathers, the first painting in a series of large nudes sent to the Salon through 1943. The culmination of his exploration of the female nude, his Bathers of 1939 earned a gold medal at the Salon des artistes français.
This last accolade crowned a silver medal Vivrel earned in 1937 at the International Exposition of Arts and Techniques in Paris. Critics unanimously praised his talent and, in 1940, Louis Paillard did not hesitate to write on the front page of Petit journal of May 6, 1940: “André Vivrel, I proclaim, is one of the best at this Salon [of the French artists].” The exhibition Vivrel – recent paintings, organized by the Galerie de Berri in May 1942, features 31 paintings illustrating the range of genres Vivrel tackled, but it is landscape that he pursued with the greatest passion. His homeland is the Loiret, where his elder brother Marcel owns a secondary residence in Châtillon-sur-Loire, not far from Champtoceaux. In the wake of the Great War, cash-strapped, he refuges there to paint en plein air at low cost. In spring 1926, Vivrel was again in Brittany, from which he brought Port de Camaret, shown at the 1926 Salon des Tuileries. A few years later, in 1934, he returned to the Côtes d’Armor, where he composed seascapes that are as many studies of the sky. Vivrel spent the summer of 1926 in Corsica. There he made watercolors which, in autumn, were presented at the Galerie Georges Petit and then in New York. Each time, critics unanimously praised their qualities: “The exhibition of André Vivrel is of a sensitive, refined artist, yet expansive in his concepts. His views of Corsica, Brittany and Paris are as delicately harmonious as his flowers” (La Semaine à Paris, November 12, 1926, p. 63). In 1928, he returned to the Midi. Rendering the warm and vibrant light of Provence, he painted Le port de Saint-Tropez, shown the same year at the Salon des Indépendants. The Mediterranean theme also appears at the Salon des Tuileries, where Vivrel presented harbor scenes and ocean liners, witnesses to a flourishing tourist industry. When Vivrel is not roaming the roads of France, he takes Paris as his model. He painted the alleys of Montmartre and the monuments of the capital, such as Notre-Dame Cathedral, which he reinterprets in a series in the manner of Monet. He liked to dwell on the quays of the Seine, which offer him numerous unusual views of the city and inspire paintings not without recalling Albert Lebourg’s Parisian landscapes. Painting until his last breath, André-Léon Vivrel died in Bonneville-sur-Touques on June 7, 1976.