Louis Berthomme Saint-andré (1905-1977)

Louis Berthomme Saint-André (1905-1977) The Purple Corset, oil on canvas, 40 x 27 cm, 53 x 39.5 cm framed. Louis Berthomme Saint-André, born February 4, 1905, in Barbery (Oise), and died October 1, 1977, in Paris, was a French painter, etcher, lithographer, illustrator, and ceramicist. In 1921, he studied under Fernand Cormon and Jean-Paul Laurens at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He won the Abd-el-Tif Prize in 1925 and was then the youngest resident of the villa in Algiers. A friend of Jean Launois, in addition to his acclaimed portraits, he painted Algiers and the Kasbah. His studies of women are reminiscent of Eugène Delacroix's, but while his luminous inspiration stems from the Algerian sun, his style is more Cézanne-like than purely Orientalist. He left Algeria in 1928, returning in 1931. Like André Hambourg, he joined the Resistance and contributed to the newspaper Vaincre. Living at the Cité Montmartre-aux-Artistes at 189 rue Ordener, he traveled to sub-Saharan Africa in 1970, working in Senegal as an artistic advisor.