‘View of Rouen’ by André Prévot-Valéri, French Impressionist, Paris Salon, Prix Rosa-Bonheur, Benezit

Signed lower right, ‘André Prévot-Valéri’ (French, 1890-1959) and painted circa 1920.

André Prévot-Valéri was the son of the landscape painter, August Prévot-Valéri (1857-1930), and grew up in the studio that they continued to share until 1930. While studying under his father, he also received lessons from Marcel Baschet, Henri Royer, and Louis-Marie Désiré-Lucas. André first exhibited at the Paris Salon at the age of twenty, enjoying immediate critical success. He continued to exhibit through 1914 and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Édouard Lemaître Prize (1911), two honorable mentions (1912, 1914), in addition to a bronze medal and the Henri Zuber Prize (1913).

As a soldier on active duty in WW1, Prévot-Valéri contributed eye-witness drawings to the weekly publication, Les Annales Politiques et Litéraires. His ‘La Patrouille dans la Nuit’ (1915) was chosen for exhibition at the Exposition Organisée au Profit des Oeuvres de Guerre (1918) and selected wartime drawings by the artist are preserved at the British Museum in London and at the Archives du Calvados in Caen.

When the Paris Salon resumed in 1919, Prévot-Valéri returned to painting landscapes. The collector and critic Jeanne Magnin, who closely followed the careers of both Auguste and André Prévot-Valéri, described André’s ‘Le Hameau’ as “A corner of nature well observed, tasted and felt, the sweetness of autumn in the village.”

Prévot-Valéri was awarded the Henri Zuber Prize for a second time in 1920, the Prix de la Société des Paysagistes (1921) and a silver medal at the Paris Salon of 1923. In 1926. He was the subject of a one-man exhibition at the Galerie Poissonnière and, in 1928, was awarded the prestigious Rosa-Bonheur Prize. Father and son exhibited together for the final time at the Paris Salon of 1930. In 1936, André Prévot-Valéri moved from Paris to Normandy’s Cotentin Peninsula, where he spent the last decades of his life painting pastoral scenes and seascapes.

We are pleased to offer this luminous Impressionist oil showing the Seine at the port of Rouen with a distant view of the towers of Rouen Cathedral.

Reference:
E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, Jacques Busse, 1999 Nouvelle Édition, Gründ 1911, Vol. 11 , page 242; Dictionnaire Biographique des Artistes Contemporains, 1910-1934, Edouard-Joseph, Paris Art & Edition 1930-1934, Vol. 3, page 161; Vollmer Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler des 20. Jarhhunderts, Hans Vollmer, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1992, Vol. 3, page 625; et al.