French painter.
He left school at the age of 11 and worked for an industrial engraver, studying drawing at night classes. He later entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and studied under Hubert Ponscarme. There he met Charles Despiau, and, to support himself financially, he worked in the studio of Alexandre Charpentier. He first exhibited in 1905 at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris with a number of works in pastels. The following year he travelled extensively around Italy with the American engraver Herbert Lespinasse (b 1884). In 1910 he won the Prix de l’Afrique Nord with a pastel and therefore spent the years from 1910 to 1912 at the Villa Abd El Tif in Algiers, travelling all over the country and absorbing the local culture. His work up to 1910 had been mainly of Parisian theatres and cafés, executed in pastels or occasionally in tempera on canvas. In Algiers he abandoned pastels and began to work in oils, producing a number of brilliantly coloured works such as Courtyard in Algiers (1912–13; Paris, Pompidou).