Painter · French
Around Giverny
Abel Lauvray
The neighbour from Vétheuil who went out on the Seine with Monet, and to whom the master handed over his studio boat.
- Dates1870 — 1950
- NationalityFrench
- DisciplinePainter
- Place of birthRennes, Ille-et-Vilaine
Biography
Louis Alphonse Abel Lauvray was born at Rennes on 21 November 1870. He read law before enrolling at the Atelier Cormon in Paris, and learned above all from Claude Monet directly. Sixty years of work yielded some fifteen hundred canvases, a third of which were lost when his studio at Mantes-la-Jolie burned at the Liberation. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, the Nationale and the Indépendants, and painted Touraine, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, Normandy, Antibes, the Somme, Venice and Greece, without ever leaving the Seine for long. He died at Vétheuil on 19 December 1950.
Around Giverny
His river is the same one, ten leagues downstream. Around 1880 Monet settled some thirty metres from the Lauvray family home at Vétheuil; the family helped the painter, then ruined, and the boy grew close to him. When Monet returned to Vétheuil in 1893 — he had been at Giverny for ten years — it was Lauvray who went out with him on the Seine, aboard the studio boat the master later handed over to him. He would paint on Monet’s advice without ever copying him.
Principal works
Key points
- 1870Born — Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine
- 1950Died
Sources
- 01Musée d’Orsay, catalogue des artistes et personnalités — Abel Lauvray
- 02Wikipédia, notice « Abel Lauvray »
- 03Yves Jaubert, Catalogue raisonné du peintre Abel Lauvray (1870–1950) — référence bibliographique, non consultée
- 04Claude Roger-Marx, Abel Lauvray (1870–1950) — référence bibliographique, non consultée
