BARBIER André, walkers on the beach, paper mounted... Lot 17

BARBIER André, walkers on the beach, paper mounted on canvas, signed lower left, (small old restoration, not very visible)(24), 61X50 André Georges Alfred Barbier was born in Arras on 24 January 1883, rue du Marché-au-filet, in the Cathedral district, into a family of notables (his father was director of the Mont de Piété). He won a first prize for piano at the age of eight, and developed a passion for astronomy and later for photography, two passions that he pursued with easel painting. In 1903, he moved to Paris and exhibited four paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. The year 1906 marked the beginning of his friendship with the painter Claude Monet, then aged 66, a meeting which was organised by the art critic Gustave Geffroy. A sincere friendship will then be established between the two painters, described through correspondence and numerous visits to the studio in Giverny. A curiosity reminds us that it was André Barbier, passionate about astronomy, who suggested to Claude Monet to adopt Zeiss glasses in order to correct the vision problems he encountered at the end of his life. Gustave Geffroy wrote: "Gifted as you are, with this rare perception that you have of plans and distances, of this air vapour so light that you know how to capture on your canvases, it is not possible that you do not appear as one of the true artists of your generation...". André Barbier exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants from 1903 to 1914 and again in 1967, 1969 and 1970. From 1924 to 1930, he exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries. In 1926, he took part in the retrospective of the Société des Indépendants and, in 1937, at the International Exhibition. In Paris, his studio located on the Quai aux fleurs on Ile Saint-Louis, is an open window: Notre-Dame, the Institute, the Eiffel Tower, the Place de la Concorde which are the subjects of his most beautiful paintings (The floods of 1910, the fog of the Seine that envelops the barges, bridges or Notre-Dame.