Achille Laugé

Private collection, South of France (gifted by the artist)

Thence by descent

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Nicole Tamburini, dated 16 January 2020 (no. 701) and will be included in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist.

Achille Laugé began his artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse where he met the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle who would become his lifelong friend. In fact, a pencil portrait of Bourdelle was his first exhibited work shown at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1884. He later enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1882. Following this, he enrolled in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel where he met and befriended the sculptor Aristide Maillol with whom he later shared a studio. In 1884, he returned to the South of France where he would remain for the rest of his career.

'Everything is filled with sunlight, but through a harmonious prism; to an acute and discerning vision is added the delicate ethereal quality of imagination.' - art critic, Gustave Geffroy. Laugé began applying his pigments more freely from 1905 onwards; the strokes became thicker and the impasto heavier. This technique allowed him to capture the brilliant translucence of southern light from his studio in the former Palais de Justice at Alet-les-Bains in the present work.