Georges d'Espagnat (1870-1950)
Born in Melun in 1870, Georges d’Espagnat’s family moved to Paris when he was a young man. A strongly independent student, he rejected the traditional places of artistic education available in the capital, claiming to have spent only four hours at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Instead he attended classes at the free academy and drew at the Louvre. D’Espagnat began his public career at the Salon des Refusées in 1891, and later exhibited at the Salon of the Société Nationale and the Salon des Independents, both venues known for their openness to modern trends. In 1903 d’Espagnat, along with the architect Frantz Jourdain and critic Ivanhoe Rambosson, founded the Salon d’Automne with the purpose of creating an alternative exhibition venue for young artists and for retrospectives of the modern artists who had been rejected at the end of the earlier century.
D’Espagnat befriended Renoir as well as Paul Signac, Henri Edmond Cross, Louis Valtat and later Maurice Denis, Bonnard and Vuillard. In 1904 he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, becoming its Vice-President in 1935. Between 1905 and 1910 he made several trips with Valtat to visit Renoir on the Côte d’Azur as well as traveling to Spain, Italy, Portugal, Britain, Germany and elsewhere.
Ironically, considering his earlier attitudes, from 1936 to 1940 he was a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Source: Biography from The Caldwell Gallery, Askart. |
