Andrieux, Alfred Louis (1879–1945)

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Related biographies: Cals, Adolphe Felix (1810–1880) · Peraire, Paul Emmanuel (1829–1893)

Browse the collection: French artists · Landscape paintings · 20th-century paintings

Biography

An unusual family

Alfred Louis Andrieux was born in Paris in 1879 into one of the more remarkable households of the Third Republic. His father was Louis Andrieux (1840-1931), a larger-than-life figure who was in turn a lawyer, public prosecutor, prefect of police of Paris, deputy, ambassador of France to Spain, journalist and writer. His mother, Helene Koechlin, came from the great Koechlin dynasty of Alsatian industrialists. And through his father's later liaison, the painter had a famous half-brother: the poet Louis Aragon, one of the founders of Surrealism, was Louis Andrieux's natural son.

Alfred chose a quieter path than either his father or his half-brother. He became a painter and illustrator, prolific and versatile, working in oil, watercolour, gouache, pastel and pencil. His surviving studio archive, spanning the years 1900 to 1944, runs to well over a thousand works.

Painter of snow, animals and the open air

Andrieux belongs to the Post-Impressionist generation that carried plein-air landscape painting into the twentieth century, in the lineage that runs from Sisley and Pissarro through to the inter-war years. He is best known for two things: animal and hunting subjects, in which he specialised as both painter and illustrator, and landscapes, particularly mountain and snow scenes painted directly from nature. In his winter subjects the snow is never a flat white but built up in blues, pale violets and creamy yellows following the contours of the ground, exactly as the Impressionists had taught a generation earlier.

Alfred Louis Andrieux, Snowy Landscape, signed oil on wood panel, early 20th century. GalerieClub Fine Art.

Exhibitions and collections

Andrieux was a member of the Societe des Artistes Francais and exhibited at the Salon des Independants in 1913, the great open salon of the Parisian avant-garde years. Later in life he was attached to the artists' community of Vence, the Provencal hill town that drew so many painters between the wars. His works entered public and private collections during his lifetime, including the Lytham St Annes Art Collection of Fylde Borough Council in England, which holds his A Lady Seated on a Balcony. He is recorded in the authority files of the Bibliotheque nationale de France and in the standard auction repertories.

He died in 1945. His paintings are typically signed "A. Andrieux" or simply "Andrieux", most often in a lower corner.

Legacy

Andrieux is one of those solidly documented, modestly priced French painters whose work still comes to market regularly in France, exactly the territory we explore in our guide to French Impressionist landscape painting beyond the famous names. For collectors, his snow scenes are the works to look for: a genuinely difficult subject, handled with the full Impressionist palette, by a painter whose story connects the world of the Belle Epoque police prefecture to the world of Surrealist poetry. Every work offered by GalerieClub Fine Art ships free to the United States and Canada.

Timeline

1879 Born in Paris, son of Louis Andrieux, prefect of police of Paris, and Helene Koechlin of the Alsatian industrial family.

1900–1944 Active years of his studio, documented by an archive of more than a thousand works in oil, watercolour, gouache and drawing.

1913 Exhibits at the Salon des Independants in Paris. Member of the Societe des Artistes Francais.

Interwar years Attached to the artists' community of Vence in Provence. Works enter the Lytham St Annes Art Collection in England.

1945 Dies, the same year as the Liberation portraits of his half-brother Louis Aragon made the family name famous in an entirely different field.

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