Louis Abel-Truchet

Born in Versailles in 1857, Abel-Truchet studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant. From 1891 he began to take part in major exhibitions such as the Salon d’Automne. When he became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1910, he was already exhibiting Hors-concours at the Salons des Artistes Français (ie he had achieved the status of being allowed to exhibit without going through the jury vetting process). He made his name depicting landscapes and views of Paris (especially Montmartre), Venice, Padoa, Marseille, Monte Carlo, Avignon and Tunis. He also painted genre scenes, portraits, still lifes and garden scenes. His style was Post-Impressionist, and he is known for his dextrous and fluid use of paint and his great sense of colour and light. At the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted in the army, receiving the Croix de Guerre to add to the Légion d’Honneur (which he had already won for his work as an artist). He died in Auxerre in September 1918. In 1919, two of his works were shown in a retrospective dedicated to artists who died in the war.