Portrait Of A Woman With Blue Eyes - Charles Picart Le Doux (1881-1959)

Charming portrait of a woman with blue eyes, 1940s (the painting is dated 1943). Signed top right Picart Le Doux. Dimensions: 24x33cm. Charles Picart Le Doux was born in 1881 in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, and died in 1959. He was a painter, engraver, poet and writer. His grandfather was a painter and glass artist. He executed, among other things, the large south rose window of Notre Dame de Paris. Friend of Corot, Vernet, Th. Gauthier, gold medalist of Queen Amélie, it was through him that the young Charles was introduced to drawing. Charles Picart Le Doux began his artistic career with classes at the Académie Julian, then at the Beaux-Arts in Paris until 1902. He first lived in Montmartre and frequented the Lapin Agile, where he met Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo. He became a close friend of René Arcos, Charles Vildrac, Georges Duhamel, and Jules Romains, with whom he supported the Abbaye group in Créteil. From 1903, he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, of which he became a member, then at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon des Tuileries. The interest generated by his early paintings led the BLOT gallery in Paris to dedicate its first major exhibition to him. The Vildrac gallery opened its doors to him, soon followed by many others in France. During the First World War, he served as a medic in the trenches. He returned wounded and sick. In the 1920s, he exhibited in Paris at the Charpentier and Drouant-David galleries. Several museums acquired 23 paintings (Paris, New York, Moscow, Tokyo). In 1921, he became friends with Aristide Maillol. In 1933, he received the Legion of Honor. That same year, he held numerous exhibitions in France and Luxembourg. In the years 1934-39, he decorated part of the lounges of the ocean liner Le Normandie and the Lycée Hélène Bouchet in Paris. He was awarded the Grand Gold Medal at the International Exhibition. During the Second World War, the painter settled in Touraine. He decorated the Tours prefecture and painted more than one hundred paintings and portraits. After the war, he returned to Paris to his studio on Rue Boisonade. He participated in the decoration of the town hall of the 14th arrondissement and held exhibitions in France (Saint-Nazaire, Angers, Amiens, Rouen, etc.) and abroad (San Francisco, Oslo, etc.). He held his last exhibition at the Mariac Gallery in 1959.