Villers/mer In 1888 Thérèse Pomey-ballue (paris 1867- Fontainebleau 1944)

Charming oil on oak panel, 23 x 16 cm.

Excellent condition. Signed lower left and dated 1888.

Sold framed. Works by Thérèse Pommey-Ballue are rare on the market.

As a recognized female artist who exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, her work benefits from the current renewed interest in female painters of this pivotal period.

The Work :

This oil on panel is a choice piece for lovers of urban genre scenes and landscapes of the 19th-century Normandy coast.

Thérèse Pommey-Ballue, a student of her husband Pierre-Ernest Ballue and the illustrious Jean-Léon Gérôme, demonstrates here an exceptional mastery of raking light.

The work captures the fleeting moment when the sun strikes the cobblestones of a narrow alley, creating a striking contrast between the shadows cast in the foreground and the soft greenery of the heights.

The old architecture, with its corbelled houses and zinc roofs, is rendered with a palpable nostalgia, evoking the picturesque charm of the French provinces or the old quarters of Villers-sur-Mer.

The artist:

Thérèse POMEY-BALLUE (Paris 1867 - Fontainebleau 1944).

She was born on January 26, 1867, in Paris, into a family known since the late 16th century whose ancestors lived in Perreux, a small village perched on the left bank of the Loire River opposite Roanne.

Trained by her father, Louis Edmond POMEY, and the illustrious Jean-Léon GÉRÔME, she exhibited at the Salon from 1886 and became a member of the Société des Artistes Français.
She received an honorable mention in 1887, a third silver medal in 1889, and the Maxime-David Prize in 1889 and 1890.

Silver medal at the Salon des Artistes Français. She exhibited at the 1889 Universal Exposition.
Highly talented, she slowed her career after her marriage in 1895 in Paris to Pierre Ernest Ballue, also a painter, to dedicate her time to raising her children and to miniature portraits. She gave birth to two daughters, Jeanne in 1896 (named after her paternal grandmother) and Marie Louise in 1902.

She was reportedly invited to work at the English court by Queen Victoria, but her husband, Pierre Ballue, refused, preferring to paint landscapes of France rather than the fog. In 1898, she received the Academic Palms and was appointed an Officer of Public Instruction. She died at the age of 76 in Fontainebleau.