Louis Mathieu Verdilhan (1875-1928) Still Life With Flowers And Fruits

The strength and sobriety of this Provençal Master who has evolved and who has moved from an impressionist technique to a form of fauvism and expressionism, to end up with a stylized, refined and outlined painting. The work is in excellent condition, it is presented in a modern black frame, American box type, which measures 97 cm by 73 cm and 88.5 cm by 63.5 cm for the painting alone. It represents a Still Life composed of flowers, a black bottle, a jar and fruit on a table in front of an open window on a Provençal landscape. On the back an old label from an American gallery and dated April 10, 1930. (see photos) Difficult to photograph the work which is signed at the bottom right is much more beautiful in reality. Louis Mathieu Verdilhan's family moved to the Chartreux district of Marseille in 1877. Coming from a poor family, he apprenticed with a house painter in 1890 but was introduced to drawing with the support of the artist- Marseille painter Eugène Giraud (Marseille 1848-1937). In 1895, he opened a workshop that he would keep all his life, at no. 12 rue Fort-Notre-Dame. In 1898, he went to Paris for the first time and worked with the decorator Adrien Karbowsky in charge of part of the ornamentation of the Salon du Bois of the Decorative Arts pavilion for the Universal Exhibition of 1900, then returned the following year. in Marseille. In 1902, he lost his left eye, which did not prevent him from painting. His artistic career began in 1902 in Marseille with an exhibition on rue Saint-Ferréol, then, in 1905, an exhibition at the Palais des Architectes on avenue du Prado. He also exhibited in Paris from 1906 at the Salon des Indépendants: Fields of Poppies (1906), Priest and Altar Boy (1910), Place de l'Horloge (1911), House with the Almond Tree (1913), La Cruche aux Fleurs (1914) ... From 1908 he also participated in the Salon d'Automne. In 1909, he spent six months in Versailles where he produced numerous paintings. From 1910 to 1914, he occupied a studio at No. 12 quai de Rive Neuve, in warehouses where the painters Girieud and Lombard were already installed (local which would later be, from 1946 to 1993, the studio of the painter François Diana). Mobilized in Toulon during the First World War, Louis Mathieu Verdilhan rubbed shoulders with Albert Marquet, under his influence, but also André Suarès and Antoine Bourdelle. After the war, he lived successively in Aix-en-Provence, Cassis and Toulon. On March 16, 1919, he married Hélène Casile, youngest daughter of the painter Alfred Casile. His notoriety increases and he exhibits as far as New York at the Kraushaar gallery. He paints a panel for the Marseille Opera for the city of Marseille: this canvas represents the July 14th celebration in Marseille and was widely criticized during the inauguration of the opera Passionné par le Vieux-Port , he made more than 130 performances between 1913 and 1920. He died of laryngeal cancer on December 15, 1928. His widow remarried a polytechnic engineer, Gaston Vanneufville, and had a daughter: actress Geneviève Casile. You can see his works in many museums and public collections: