André Eugène Costilhes

André Eugène Costilhes (1865-1940) Two studies of women, drawing

circa 1900

André Eugène Costilhes, born on 8 April 1865 in Cunlhat (Puy-de-Dôme) and died on 1 September 1940 in Pontchartrain (Yvelines), was a French painter and decorator. His artistic training began in Auvergne as a young self-taught artist. Then, in Paris, he studied with Eugène Grasset and Alphonse Cornet, before going on to the Beaux-Arts, where he was trained in academic painting. His teachers included Léon Bonnat, Luc-Olivier Merson, Pierre-Victor Galland and Gustave Boulanger. However, he soon freed himself from the straitjacket of academicism and followed in the footsteps of the Impressionists, favouring painting on the motif in the open air. A protean artist, he drew and painted a wide range of subjects (landscapes, monuments, street scenes, seascapes, portraits, academic nudes, etc.), using a variety of techniques that he mastered (oil, watercolour, gouache, pastel, charcoal, sanguine, acrylic, ink, etc.). A remarkable portraitist and excellent landscape painter, his sanguine drawings, of female nudes in particular, also attracted the attention of art critics. He criss-crossed the districts of Paris and frequently travelled outside the capital, mainly to Auvergne, Île-de-France, Brittany and Normandy, all places where he set up his easel. He exhibited at the Salon des artistes français in 1891, 1896, 1903, 1905, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1921 and 1932; at the Salon des indépendants in 1903, 1907 and 1934; and at the Salon d'automne in 1903. He also exhibited at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in 1892, the Salon de Nantes in 1904, 1905, 1906 and 1907, the Salon du Centre in 1905, 1907 and 1934, and various other lesser-known Salons. Alongside his participation in the Salons, he exhibited in the two famous galleries that promoted the Impressionists, the Durand-Ruel gallery (in 1902) and the Georges Petit gallery (in 1903), as well as in the P. Hénaut (1930) and the Galerie des Champs-Élysées (1937). The State acquired several of his works: in 1907, a large oil on canvas ‘Coin de village aux environs de Clermont-Ferrand’, which is in the Musée d'Art Roger-Quilliot in Clermont-Ferrand; an ink drawing ‘Vue de Beaumont’, kept in the Musée du Louvre; an oil painting ‘Paysage’, attributed to the Musée Francisque Mandet in Riom; an oil painting ‘Le pont Marie et Saint-Gervais, la Seine au printemps’, deposited with the Mairie d'Ermont in 1936. The Tananarive museum received one of his paintings, ‘Ploughing’. The artist was also a keen photographer, and produced several hundred glass plates, some of which are devoted to the Auvergne region and are held in the photo library of the Archives Départementales du Puy-de-Dôme, and others, on the capital and the surrounding area, in the Archives de Paris.