Pierre De Belay "the Seaweed Gatherers" Brittany

Pierre Savigny de Belay, or Pierre de Belay, born on December 12, 1890, on Rue des Boucheries in Quimper, France, and died on June 30, 1947, in Ostend, Belgium, was a French painter. His real name was Eugène Pierre Savigny (or Pierre Savigny de Belay, after one of his maternal ancestors). Pierre de Belay discovered his vocation as a painter in 1900. His father, Azéma Savigny, a wine merchant and amateur artist who painted many landscapes of the banks of the Odet River and scenes of the port of Quimper, and his mother, Carmelle Bodet, did not oppose their son's ambitions. The only advice he accepted was that of his father. By 1903, Pierre Savigny de Belay was already painting numerous portraits of prominent citizens of Quimper. He was noticed by Max Jacob, a poet from Quimper and a close friend of the family. Max Jacob had already predicted that he would become a famous artist. He studied without a teacher, worked fifteen hours a day, sketched fishermen in the port, and noted episodes from the daily lives of sailors. Max Jacob taught him to direct and control his nature, but not to disobey it. "Drawing," he would repeat, "begins not with copying natural forms, but with interpreting these forms for the purpose of creation. There is no creation where there is only servile copying." Entrance to the Bateau-Lavoir, c. 1910. In 1905, Max Jacob and Pierre Savigny de Belay settled in Paris. They lived in Montmartre, at the Bateau-Lavoir, which also housed Picasso's studio. Pierre de Belay met many artists there—Juan Gris, Apollinaire, Salmon—whose portrait he painted, and immersed himself in a veritable ferment of ideas. Despite this excitement, Pierre Savigny de Belay maintained his independence from the artistic trends of that time.