Marie Paul Gaston LATOUCHE dit Gaston LA TOUCHE (Saint-Cloud - Lot 121

Marie Paul Gaston LATOUCHE dit Gaston LA TOUCHE (Saint-Cloud, 1854-Paris, 1913) The Cooper and his Cat, 1892 Oil on canvas signed lower left and dated 1892. 97 x 79.5 cm. (Canvas faded). A celebrated painter in his day, close friend of Manet and admired by Edmond Rostand, Gaston La Touche was brought back into the limelight in 2015 with a retrospective organized at the Musée de La Celle-Saint-Cloud. A child of the upper middle class in Normandy, La Touche took private drawing lessons from a local painter in his youth. After several unsuccessful attempts, he was accepted at the Salon in 1875. Established in Paris, he became a regular at the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, where he met the artists and critics who embodied modernity. He frequented Manet's studio, often asking for his advice, and became his friend until his death. He became close friends with Marcellin Desboutins, a central figure in the bohemian movement, and with Emile Zola, whose L'Assommoir he illustrated. Zola's influence initially gave his work a social turn. La Touche painted a Strike in Anzin and practiced realist art. But at the turn of the 1890s, his friend Félix Bracquemond persuaded him to let his palette sing by looking at Watteau and Fragonard. The artist changed his style, converting to colorism and destroying much of his earlier work. The time came for success. La Touche received official commissions, decorating the Saint-Cloud town hall, the Ministry of the Interior and even the Elysée Palace. He won a silver medal at the 1889 Universal Exhibition, and a gold medal at the 1900 one - the year in which he helped decorate the Train bleu, the sumptuous restaurant at the Gare de Lyon. He also exhibited across the Atlantic, at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and his work entered numerous American collections. His wife's social skills enabled him to lead a rich social life. Their "Sundays at Saint-Cloud" attracted, among others, Félix and Marie Bracquemond, Marcellin Desboutins, Charles Gounod, Paul Helleu, Jean-Louis Forain, Raymond Poincaré, Albert Besnard, Jacques-Emile Blanche and Edmond Rostand, who commissioned several paintings for his Arnaga villa. La Touche was at the height of his fame when he died prematurely of peritonitis in 1913. Paintings of coopers are extremely rare. Ours, dated 1892, dates back to Gaston La Touche's realist vein, before he became famous for his fêtes galantes (the same year he exhibited paintings of masons at work). But his taste for unusual lighting and warm, amber hues was already apparent.