Paul Franz Namur (1877-1958) - Femme des îles

Perfect condition
Oil on panel

Paul-Franz Namur studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Valenciennes. Then in Paris at the Académie Julian. He oriented himself towards portrait, landscapes and allegories.

Paul-Franz Namur paints tourist sites such as Saint Mark's Square in Venice; then numerous landscapes of snowy mountains. Indeed, in November 1900, he married at Saint Philippe du Roule church in Paris, Madeleine Vallot, daughter of Joseph Vallot, founder and director of the Mont-Blanc Observatory, knight of the Legion of Honour, Honorary President of the French Alpine Club. She herself is a world-renowned mountaineer who holds the world record for ascent of Mont Blanc with 6 ascents and 3 ten-day stays at the Vallot Observatory. He would illustrate several times the covers of magazines and journals, notably Femina or Les Annales.

In 1904, Paul-Franz Namur becomes Editor-in-Chief of La Revue illustrée, following the takeover of the newspaper L'Illustration in March 1904 by the Baschet family. Paul-Franz Namur takes the opportunity to change the format of La Revue illustrée, ‘semi-monthly of high society, art, literature and the fashionable world’. In 1907, Paul-Franz Namur, while remaining artistic director, is replaced as Editor-in-Chief by Jules Lamarre, publisher also of scientific books.

He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français and at the Salon d’Automne.

In 1908, he painted the portrait of writer and playwright Jehanne d’Orliac.

In 1909, he portrayed in his studio on Rue Spontini in Paris, Mata Hari.

World War I marked him forever. Mobilized, he fought on the front and recorded with numerous charcoal sketches the horrors of war, with factual or dark and lugubrious allegorical representations of the world of the conflict. After the Great War, “the War to End All Wars,” he published a work recounting this terrible period under the title “Les Limaces sur les lauriers” which he self-published, on a cash-on-delivery basis, in his Rue Spontini studio.[1]

In 1924, he illustrated the cover of Myrtil Schwartz’s book, Vers l’idéal par la montagne, memories of his ascents of high mountains in Europe and America, whose preface was written by his wife Madeleine Namur-Vallot.

In 1929, he published a pamphleteering anti-communist essay titled “A Mon Ami Kokolando: sauvage des iles de la Sagesse,” published by Éditions de l'Éléphant Vert in Paris.

During the interwar period, Paul-Franz Namur, who had settled in Antibes with his wife and their daughter (Germaine Namur born in September 1901 in Paris), received the art world at their villa on the Côte d’Azur.

In 1940, during World War II, he enlisted in the French Legion of Fighters as a veteran of the Great War. After this second conflict, he was arrested in April 1945 for his involvement with Pétain. He was imprisoned for a time in the Antibes prison, then placed under house arrest at the Montfleury Hotel in Cannes before being released after six months[2]. He would write a book during his captivity to proclaim his legitimism. In this diary he relates what his daily life was like during the six months he spent behind bars. Presenting himself as a true martyr, the Pétainist he was denounces the purge at the Liberation in France. This work would be published in 1950 under the title “I Chose Prison: Memories and Judgments to Please Some, Displease Others, and Satisfy My Freedom to Think” by a group of amateurs in Antibes[3].