Louis Vivin

Vivin's Le Moulin de la Galette, oil on canvas, 1926 ^[1]

Louis Vivin (born July 28, 1861, Hadol, France; died May 28, 1936 in Paris) was a French painter.

Biography

Vivin was self-taught and a representative of naïve painting. He showed great enthusiasm for painting as a child, but his career took him in a completely different direction: he worked as a postal clerk until 1922, pursuing his art only in his spare time.^[2] Eventually, he was discovered by the German art critic Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), an association which helped him start exhibitions and build a reputation as a serious artist. When he worked in the postal service, his job was an inspector. Once he retired in the year of 1923, Louis Vivin finally took up the full-time part of being an artist.^[3] His birthplace was in the city of Hadol, France. He moved to Paris, France in the year of 1889 where he lived with his wife in the district of Montparnasse.^[4][5]

Works

The subjects of Vivin's paintings were still life, hunting subjects, and the city of Paris.^[6] Vivin was a contemporary of Henri Rousseau, Camille Bombois, André Bauchant, and Séraphine Louis, known collectively as the "Sacred Heart Painters" and as masters of French naïve painting.^[7] Vivin's works are known to have a sad and dismal theme to them. He was also known for painting from his memory. Louis Vivin was influenced by the work and details of Jean-Louis-Ernes Meissonier’s paintings. Louis Vivin’s first one-man exhibition was placed at the Galerie des Quatre Chemins, and it was organized by Uhde in 1927.^[3] His later work was considered to become less dependent of the melancholy mood, and it focused more on blocks of color and form.^[4][5]

References