Dignimont André (1891-1965) Paris, Montmartre "nude With Garter Belt" Watercolor, Signed

DIGNIMONT André (1891-1965) Paris, Montmartre ‘Nude with suspenders’ Watercolour, signed lower right, 32 x 24 cm The son of a wine merchant, André Dignimont first studied at the Oratorian college in Juilly before going on to study languages in England (Craven College in Beckenham, Kent, where he was a classmate of the future actor André Luguet, with whom he remained friends[3]). His return to France in 1911 led to seven years in the army: three years of military service and four years of war. André Dignimont then studied under Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. Settling in Montmartre, he led ‘the joyful life of a rapin’ — hence his nickname ‘le Grand Dig’, which would stay with him — in the company of fellow students and friends, notably Jean-Gabriel Domergue, Roger de La Fresnaye, Louis Marcoussis, Robert Lotiron and André Warnod. His career spanned more than four decades, leading him to portraiture and female nudes — watercolours, drawings and prints, as Dignimont did not paint on canvas — as well as book illustration and theatre set design, bringing him into contact with painters, writers (Colette, Francis Carco, Pierre Mac Orlan) and actors. In 1927, he left Montmartre to settle permanently at 1 Rue Boutarel, which, as a flea market enthusiast, he turned into a museum of unusual objects[6]. It was later that André Dignimont began to take an interest in landscape painting, encouraged in this by André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and inspired naturally by his walks in Paris and his summer holidays, as recounted by Françoise Py-Chereau[7]: at the home of lawyer and academician Maurice Garçon in Ligugé in Poitou, at Jules Cavaillès's home in Yonne, at Colette's home in Saint-Tropez, at Henri Jeanson's home in Equemauville near Honfleur[8], and also near Paimpol, where Betty de Mauduit turned her château in Bourblanc into a haven for artists and writers, where Dignimont could meet up with Pierre Benoit, Joseph Kessel, Francis Carco and Louis Touchagues[9].
Colette
Colette reveals: "When I want to be alone with you, I politely dismiss your acrobats, your sailors and your non-commissioned officers with cherry-red mouths, I apologise to your sweet female cattle, I turn the corner of an empty house with its shutters flapping, peacefully stained with blood, and I find you bent over a flower-filled lampstand – Jeanette hearts, daffodils and columbines mixed together (let's not forget the forget-me-nots!) – which you paint carefully, moved and dreamy like an old maid."
He illustrated newspapers such as Le Rire, Demain, Monsieur - Revue des élégances, des bonnes manières et de tout ce qui intéresse Monsieur, Le Crapouillot, Le Sourire, Femina, la Gazette du Bon Ton, La Guirlande, Comœdia, Flirt...
Public collections
Belgium
Arlon, Musée Gaspar (collection of the Luxembourg Archaeological Institute)[25].
France
Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts.
Nantes, Museum of Fine Arts, La Maison du Pas Périlleux by Marc Elder, 9 wood engravings 16.8x13.9 cm, before 1925[26].
Paris:
Contemporary Art Fund - Paris Collections, Bust of a Young Woman, red chalk 66x50cm, circa 1944[27].
Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris:
Nuits de Paris, book by Francis Carco enriched with 26 original etchings 29x23 cm by André Dignimont, one of 430 copies, 1927[11];
Road leading to a village, watercolour, 50x43cm, 1932[28];
Landscape, ink and watercolour, 50x46cm, 1933[29];
Nude crouching on a pink upholstered seat, watercolour and gouache, 64x50cm, 1936[30].
National Museum of Modern Art.
National Theatre of the Opéra-Comique, La route de Montrichard, watercolour, 50 x 65 cm, circa 1954 (on loan from the National Centre for Visual Arts)[31].
Puteaux, National Contemporary Art Fund.
Rambouillet, presidential residence (on loan from the Centre national des arts plastiques):
Garden, watercolour, circa 1953[32];
Condé-sur-Loire, watercolour, circa 1953[33].
Rodez, Prefecture of Aveyron, Le repos, watercolour 49x64cm, 1954 (on loan from the Centre national des arts plastiques)[34].
Romania
Bucharest, National Museum of Art of Romania.
Switzerland
Pully, Pully Art Museum[35].