Albert Brabo – Still Life with Marionettes – Circa 1925

Delightful still life representing a composition of marionettes and a tea pot in a sitting room. This large format oil on canvas painting is signed in the lower left corner and is mounted in a Montparnasse style wood frame. Comparison with other similar works produced by this artist date this work around 1920-25.

Albert Brabo was a French painter of figures, portraits, nudes, landscapes and wall compositions.

Born April 12, 1894 in Alès (Gard) to a printer, painter and poet father, Albert Brabo studied drawing in 1907 at the Municipal School of Drawing in Alès. Having received a scholarship, he went to Paris and won the Grand Prix de Dessin de la Ville in 1909, at the age of fifteen. He attended the School of Decorative Arts and various academies. He began to exhibit at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in 1911 and was included in the retrospective of this Salon in 1926.

After the war, he participated in the Salon d'Automne from 1920 and the Salon des Tuileries from 1922; he also appears at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts and the Salon of Orientalist Painters. He exhibits his works in Sweden, the United States and Japan. In 1927 he received the Grand Prize for Painting in North Africa. In 1937 he won the Universal Exhibition in Paris.

A fatal blow was dealt to his health and his artistic activity after his studio was looted in 1943 during the Second World War; from 1945 he stopped painting until his death in Vence (Alpes-Maritimes) on August 20, 1964 at the age of 70.

His work remains firmly rooted in the tradition of the 19th century. Le Delarge (Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Plastic Arts) writes about him: “He brings together all the talents of his time. Impressionist landscape painter in 1913, Fauve portrait painter in 1919, Cézanne landscape painter in 1923 and in a more subdued way at the Marquet, Cour de la villa Abd-el-Tif, (1927) and until 1942, realist portrait painter in 1924, painter of art deco nudes in 1925 or 1928. His know-how allows him to bring a kind of perfection to each of his works”.

Sources: Benezit, Dictionary of Artists,1999; Élisabeth Cazenave, Les artistes de l'Algérie: dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, 1830-1962, 2001; Dictionnaire des arts plastiques modernes et contemporains.


Artiste: Albert Brabo (1894-1964).
Signed in lower left corner.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 60 x 81 cm. / 23 ½ x 32 in.
Frame: 73 x 94 cm. / 28 ¾ x 37 in. Very good condition.
Origine: France.