Abel Faivre Paintings

Biography

Born 30 March 1867, in Lyons; died August 1945.

Painter, watercolourist, pastellist, draughtsman, illustrator. Genre scenes, portraits, figures, nudes, interiors, still-lifes (fruit). Humorous cartoons.
Abel Faivre was a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Poncet at the École des Beaux-Arts, Lyons, which he entered in 1886, and then of Benjamin-Constant and Jules Lefebvre in Paris. He also received advice from Renoir. He exhibited regularly at the Salon de Lyons, in 1899 with Return from Wagram, winning the Salon medal in 1897, and at the Salon de Paris from 1982, with Woman Musing in 1898, The Virgin with Children in 1899, Woman with a Fan in 1901, Child with a Book in 1906, and Portrait of Maurice Donnay in 1907. At this salon he won a third-class medal in 1894, and he was awarded an honourable mention at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and the Légion d’Honneur in 1906.

Although his portraits of women are charming, it is as an illustrator rather than a painter that he is remembered. His drawing, which contrasts white with flat blocks of black, is forceful, deliberate and cruel. He contributed caricatures to many periodicals of the period: L’Assiette au beurre, La Baïonnette, Candide, L’Écho de Paris, Figaro, Gazette du bon ton, Le Journal, and Le Rire. His targets were mainly the world of medicine and the bourgeoisie – especially mature middle-class women with animal-like and lecherous faces.

Museum and Gallery Holdings

Lyons (MBA): Portrait of a Young Girl; Woman in Blue
Paris (Mus. d’Orsay): Woman with a Fan (1901)