Trinity House
Artists’ Biographies Abel-Truchet, Louis French, 1857-1918
Louis Abel-Truchet was born in Versailles, but it was his life in the city of Paris that gained him notoriety. He studied under Jules Lefebvre (1836-1911) and Benjamin Constant (1845-1902) at the Académie Julian in Paris, and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. He was also the founding treasurer of the Société des Humoristes. Whilst Abel-Truchet mostly painted landscapes in Marseilles, Paris and Vienna and genre scenes in a style after the Impressionists, his role as an artist was difficult to define due to the variety of his work. During the First World War, AbelTruchet, then aged 57, volunteered to fight. This experience formed the basis of his work as an artist depicting the war and scenes that he witnessed. He was awarded the Légion d’honneur and La Croix de Guerre and died during military service in 1918, the last few months of the war.
Adrion, Lucien
French, 1889-1953 Adrion left his native town of Strasbourg in 1907 and moved to Paris to work as a draftsman to the fashion industry. He travelled to London, Munich and Frankfurt. When he visited Germany the outbreak of the First World War meant he was demobilised in Berlin. Here Adrion studied at the studio of Hermann Struck (1876-1944), a well-known artist in etchings and engravings who was also the master of artists such as Marc Chagall (1887-1985) and Lesser Ury (1861-1931). Adrion remained in Berlin until after the end of the First World War, and returned to Strasbourg in 1919. His signed lithographs were a success and monetarily fuelled his travels back to Paris. Georges Chéron (?-1931), an art
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dealer who also represented artists like Amadeo Modigliani and Foujita, staged a one-man show of Adrion’s work in February 1921 and represented him henceforward. In the neighbourhood of Montparnasse, Adrion associated with young Eastern European painters such as Chaime Soutine (1893-1943), Pinchus Krémegne (1890-1981) and Michel Kikoine (1892-1968) who were to comprise the École de Paris Group. The artist was greatly appreciated for his crowded street scenes around Paris. For example, the critic Galtier-Boissiére (1891-1966) wrote, “Il a le sens du mouvement des foules, du mouvement de la vie.” (He has a feeling for the movement of crowds, the movement of life.) There is a distinct shift in Adrion’s later style, when bored with his life in Paris he left his agent Chéron for Normandy and focused on painting landscapes. These were immediately successful and gained great popularity. In 1926, Adrion finally made his professional debut at the Salon des Indépendants. He also showed at the Salon d’Automne in 1940 and at the Salon des Tuileries from the following year. He passed away in Cologne, France in 1953.
Béraud, Jean
French, 1849-1935 Jean Béraud was the son of a French sculptor but first studied law in Paris, turning to painting after the Franco-Prussian War. His two years at the École des Beaux-Arts under Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) inspired him to paint portraits. As a Belle Époque painter and illustrator, Jean Béraud skillfully documented Parisian daily life, which by then had become a spectacle of display and a display of the spectacular. After Baron Haussmann expanded Paris’s boulevards, renewed interest was found in fashionable strolls
around the city. Béraud’s work focused on Paris, studying urban life and its people. Béraud had ample subject matter to be inspired by as Paris became a city of flaneurs, idle metropolitan strollers. The leisurely activity of aimless wandering became a hobby for the most cultured of individuals. Jean Béraud achieved success and honours in his lifetime, exhibiting at annual Salons from 1873 to 1889, and he was awarded a gold medal at the 1889 Paris International Exhibition. He was an active founding member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, exhibiting there from 1890 to 1929. In 1936, a year after his death, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Musée Carnavalet, held memorial exhibitions of his work.
Blampied, Edmund British, 1886-1966
Born in Jersey in the Channel Islands, Edmund Blampied’s ar t ist ic career took off exponentially when he was discovered drawing caricatures of a local election at the age of sixteen. His first language was Jerriais, and he spoke hardly any English when he attended the Lambeth School of Art in London. His first published illustrations appeared in The Daily Chronicle in January 1905. Blampied is known primarily for his etchings and dry-point engraving in the early part of his career; in the twenties the printing business was booming and he often received commissions for illustrations. He later worked oils, lithography a nd even bron ze. Ma ny (primarily American) investors were interested in Blampied’s paintings produced in the late 1920s and in the following years he focused on exhibiting works on paper and paintings in London and in Glasgow. In 1926 Blampied sold all of his possessions and travelled through southern