By André Hambourg
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
A charming oil on canvas circa 1970 by modern French painter Andre Hambourg. The piece depicts blue boats with red sails out at sea - the orange setting sun beyond and a seagull flying overhead.
Signature:
Signed lower right & titled verso
Dimensions:
Framed: 15"x20"
Unframed: 9"x14"
Provenance:
Private French collection
André Hambourg studied sculpture with Niclausse at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1926 to 1930. He then entered the studio of Lucien Simon at the École des Beaux-Arts, before leaving to work in studios in Montparnasse. In 1931 he visited Normandy and Honfleur. In 1933, Albert Brabo and Jean Launois put him forward for the Villa Abd-el-Tif prize and he then lived in Algeria and Morocco for nearly ten years. Called up in 1939 in Morocco, he was demobilised in 1940. Between 1942 and 1945, under the pseudonym André Hache, he became a reporter and draughtsman for the newspaper of the French army, under Colonel Raoul Salan. He took part in the liberation of France and in the German campaign, was decorated with the Croix de Guerre and produced two works about the campaign, Berchtesgaden Party ( Berchtesgaden-Party) and From Algiers to Berchtesgaden ( D'Alger à Berchtesgaden), in 1947. From 1946 he took up his career as a painter again, painting portraits, nudes, landscapes, still-lifes and compositions, spending much time in Normandy. In 1948 he married Nicole Rachet, the grand-daughter of Eugène Boudin's doctor and friend. From 1961 the Galerie Paul Pétridès represented him in France, and the Wally Findlay Gallery represented him in the USA from 1962. At that time he set up a studio in a Normandy farm, and in 1972 he set up another studio in St-Rémy-de-Provence, in the middle of an olive grove once painted by Van Gogh. His large output includes Civilisation 37 (1937), Refugees from St-Dié (1944), Sunday in the Great Courtyard (1956), Breakfast (1957), Venetian Bedroom (1958), Bosphorus in December (1966), Western Wall in Jerusalem (1970), and Outdoor Market in Abidjan (1973). He painted crowds and scenes with people in Paris and Trouville, and Maghreb, Jerusalem and Abidjan markets, and also took inspiration from the special light emanating from the large expanses of water under the skies of Honfleur, London, Venice and Istanbul.
From 1952 he was the official painter of the Navy and, from 1963 onwards, he undertook many voyages, some aboard vessels of the French Navy, to Venice, the Soviet Union, Israel and Britain; to Ivory Coast (1971-1972); to the USA (1973, 1978 and 1979); and to Mexico (1978). He joined round-the-world missions aboard the Commandant Bourdais and Jeanne d'Arc (1983-1985), and visited Venice again in 1989. From these travels he brought back many sketches and preparatory drawings for subsequent paintings and for use as illustrations in collectors' editions of books.In 1951 President Vincent Auriol bestowed on him the insignia of Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, and in 1960 he was made Officer of the Légion d'Honneur, in 1986 Commandeur des Arts et Lettres and Commandeur of the Légion d'Honneur, and in 1996 Grand Officier de l'Ordre National du Mérite. He held many other French and foreign distinctions.
He was also a lithographer and engraver and, above all, an illustrator of collectors' books, including Georges Duhamel's La Pierre d'Horeb ( La Pierre d'Horeb) (1953), Kipling's The Return of Imray (1956), Léo Larguier's St-Germain-des-Prés (1958), Henri de Régnier's Venetian Life ( La Vie Vénitienne) (1959), Sully Prudhomme's Private Diary ( Journal Intime) (1960), Honfleur Lights ( Lumières de Honfleur) by Lucie Delarue-Madrus (1964), Joseph Kessel's Land of Love and Fire ( Terre d'Amour et de Feu) (1967), Henry de Montherlant's Gypsum Flower ( La Rose des Sables...
Category
1970s Modern Andre Hambourg Art