Raymond Allègre: zoom on a work

Raymond Allègre was a French painter born in Marseille on August 27, 1857, and died in the same city in 1933.
Pupil of Léon Bonnat and Antoine Vollon, friend of Jean-Paul Laurens, Jean-Baptiste Olive and Joseph Garibaldi. Raymond Allègre is sensitive to the Orientalist movement. From 1875, he painted landscapes of the Paris region and Normandy, then returned to Provence, where he painted the Provencal coast, Martigues, Monaco and the surrounding area. Having fallen in love with Venice during a trip in 1900, the Serenissima also inspired many of his paintings.

In 1900, his Alger and Cassis panels were used to decorate the Le Train bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon in Paris.
27 painters took part in the creation of the restaurant’s pictorial décor, featuring a total of 40 marouflaged canvases.

Raymond Allègre is one of those painters whose brushes sublimated the light of Provence between the second half of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th. He remains deeply attached to his native Provence and to the city of his birth, Marseille. He also owes his attachment to Provence to his friends Jean-Baptiste Olive and Joseph Garibaldi.
He exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1880 to 1932, and won numerous prizes and awards at the Paris Salon and the Universal Exhibition.

Painting…an astonishing art whose light knows no bounds.

Apollinaire, 1913

SEASIDE IN PROVENCE
Oil on wood panel 28 x 53 cm.
Collection SNCF – SARDO Centre national des archives historiques
This work was probably part of a commission to decorate the Train Bleu restaurant.

Two silhouettes of young women are in the foreground. Their silhouettes draw our gaze to the landscape in the background. The sea that fades into the horizon quickly gives way to the immense sky. In the distance, blurred by atmospheric perspective and heat haze, the winding coasts that outline the shores of the Mediterranean are lined with golden houses that blend into the blue of sky and sea.
The painter uses a wooden panel typical of plein-air artists, with bright, cheerful colors that emphasize the luminosity of the landscape, and is signed lower right by R.Allègre.

  • 27 août 1857

    Born in Marseille

  • 1875

    He painted landscapes of the Paris region and Normandy

  • 1880

    He began exhibiting at the Salon in Paris, until 1932.

  • 1883

    Honorable Mention at the Paris Salon

  • 1893

    Prix Raigecourt-Goyon

  • 1900

    First trip to Venice

  • 1900

    Bronze medal from the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition

  • 1900

    Commissioned by the Le Train bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, he painted the Cassis and Algiers panels.

  • 1903

    Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur

  • Janvier 1933

    Death in Marseilles, aged 75

Édouard-Joseph, Dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains, Tome 1, A-E, Art & Édition, 1930, p. 30
Gérald Schurr and Pierre Cabanne, Dictionnaire des petits maîtres de la peinture : 1820-1920, Paris, Éditions de l’Amateur, 2008, (ISBN 2859174699)