André Prévot-Valéri

André Prévot-Valéri (March 20, 1890—July, 1959) was a French painter known for pastoral and coastal landscapes, especially in Normandy, where he spent the last decades of his life. He also published drawings of scenes he witnessed as a soldier during World War I. He was the son of the landscape painter Auguste Prévot-Valéri (1857-1930). Father and son were both recipients of the Prix Rosa-Bonheur. When Prévot-Valéri was born in 1890, his father Auguste was in his early thirties and becoming a well-established painter of landscapes. Prévot-Valéri grew up in the studio he was to share with his father until the latter's death in 1930, at rue Aumont-Théville, 6. The building was also home to numerous other artists, including J. M. Barnsley, George Wharton Edwards, Carlos-Lefebvre, and Joseph de La Nézière. The building still stands, and from the street one can see the large, high windows that make its rooms ideal for artists' studios. As a youth, he showed an aptitude, shared with his father, for playing the violin. He considered a career in music, but ultimately chose to devote himself to painting. He learned from his father, and also studied under Marcel Baschet, Henri Royer, and Louis-Marie Désiré-Lucas. He made his debut at age 20 at the Paris Salon of 1910 with a winter landscape, Les pommières; hiver. He had immediate success, and continued to exhibit every year through 1914, winning a series of awards: the Édouard Lemaître Prize in 1911; an honorable mention from the Salon in 1912; and in 1914, for his painting Le village (subsequently purchased by the State), a bronze medal as well as the Henri Zuber Prize. Both the Paris Salon and Prévot-Valéri's career came to a halt with the onset of World War I. As a soldier, he contributed eye-witness charcoal drawings of warfare to the weekly publication Les Annales politiques et littéraires. His charcoal drawing La Patrouille dans la Nuit (1915) was exhibited in 1918 in Paris at the Exposition Organisée au Profit des Oeuvres de Guerre.