ARTISTS' WORKSHOP FUND (Verdier, Bernet, Lejeune), auction, on November 22nd, 2025 in Poitiers

Terms of sale

Studio collection of the Poitevin painter Maxime André VERDIER and works by various regional artists including Henri LEJEUNE, Raoul CARRE, Henri PLISSON, Raoul ETEVE, Jehan BERJONNEAU, etc. Fonds d'atelier du peintre poitevin Maxime André VERDIER (Expert. Mme philippine Maréchaux). "André Maxime Pierre VERDIER was born in Poitiers on August 13, 1908 where he spent all his life. Passionate about drawing, he began an apprenticeship as a draughtsman-lithographer and engraver, and attended evening classes at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts in Poitiers until 1933. He won 1st prize in all the subjects taught: painting, drawing, modelling, decorative composition and anatomy. From 1929, he designed gardens for a horticulturist in Poitiers and took part in exhibitions. After fulfilling his military service obligations, in 1931-32 he drew, painted, lithographed, worked extensively in commercial advertising... and sang. The Second World War put an end to his private publicity work. He then joined the secretariat of the Poitiers Hospitals, and in 1941 became director of the Château La Badonnière, a sort of air hospital near Vivonne. Up to 130 children were housed there. They came from Poitiers, but there were also children of refugees from Paris, Toulon and eastern France, the "little Moselle children", as they were called... They had to be fed, housed, heated, clothed and educated by the team's nurses and teachers... and they also had to secretly evacuate a rescued pilot whose plane had been shot down by German anti-aircraft fire in a nearby field; He continued to paint, lithograph and write calligraphy. He was a very good musician and knew the Poitevin dialect, so he collected music from old Christmas carols and calligraphed the words, which he then illuminated in a magnificent book. He also calligraphed missals for his own children, and decorated books such as Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, and more light-hearted ones such as Les aventures du roi Pausole and Les chansons de Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs, in 1947. From 1945 onwards, he exhibited his work annually in Poitiers. He exhibited first in galleries and then, from 1958, at his home, 38 boulevard du Pont Joubert, but also in Cholet, Angers, Bergerac, Antibes, Aix-les-Bains, La Rochelle, Cénevières in the Lot, Droué in the Loir-et-Cher, and also in Paris (Galeries Lefranc, Duncan, de la Tour, Bernheim jeune), Deauville, and then abroad, in Algiers, Beirut, Togo, Buenos Ayres, Montreal, New York, Chicago where he sold La Vienne à Bonneuil. He was admitted to the Salon des Artistes français in 1948, and became a member in 1949. In 1954, he was admitted to the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts in Poitiers, where he taught drawing, painting and modelling, as well as anatomy and art history. He also taught anatomy and art history to several generations of students preparing for the Certificat d'aptitude à une formation artistique supérieure (CAFAS). It was from this art history course that he designed, wrote and then published his Notes sur l'Histoire de l'Art, a book that was entirely drawn and calligraphed! From 1960 onwards, he signed his works Maxime Pierre André Verdier. In 1972, he became a librarian and then retired as a teacher in 1976, but continued his work as a painter, which only came to an end with his death in 1987. This heir to the great classical movements of the nineteenth century was a lover of precision of line, technique and light. He allowed himself to be swept along by the great abstract movements of his century, without appropriating them and remaining himself. From his earliest days as an artist, he was a remarkable portraitist: of his mother, his wife and his children, and from 1970 onwards of his grandchildren, university professors and members of well-known Poitou families. He drew characters from everyday life on the fly: blacksmiths, washerwomen, seamstresses, fishermen, lumberjacks, etc. His first paintings were in bold colours crushed with a brush in the tradition of pointillism, which was still in fashion. The painter worked in large expanses of smooth colour, sometimes with a knife, almost always in oil and very rarely in watercolour or gouache. From 1940 onwards, he was inspired by life in the great outdoors. He vibrated with it and painted the light on the water of rivers or ponds, then later painted that of the sea when the family could go on holiday in Brittany, the islands of Ré or Oléron, Saint-Jean-de-Luz or Saint-Tropez. These are sunrises and sunsets through the trees, houses in the countryside at all seasons of the year. He immersed himself in nature with a sort of sense of wonder. This period of great production was one of maturity. At the age of forty, he worked a great deal, in a rage to paint everything that was eternal and beyond man, in one go, with almost no remorse, and he still began working on manuscripts, which he saw as a double return to his unforgettable sources: religion and drawing, the great myths, in the form of miniatures. To the end of his life André Verdier remained a solitary man, enamoured of beauty, painting in resonance, in vibration, in the manner of the vocal music he loved so much."

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Special conditions:

-Cash payment: by credit card, cheque up to 1000 euros with 2 pieces of ID, bank transfer, 3D secure bank link List of service providers (steps to be taken by the buyer) : Carriers with vehicle - ART TRANSPORTS BERNARD 05 63 02 66 55 or - TRANSPORT MAURAN 06 61 14 08 48, 05 56 42 31 18 [email protected] - PACAUD Transports et services - 06.80.41.14.24 - SARL WILLY - B .TRANSPORT - 06.12.18.56.96 - [email protected] - LTSE (Brittany, Paris and South-West) [email protected] - Ludovic ROSSIGNOL (Belgium): [email protected] Parcel delivery companies - The Packengers - [email protected] - 01.76.44.00.90 - MAILBOXES [email protected] / 05 49 13 03 51 (only for purchases made in Poitiers) - COCOLIS.FR (Parcel transport between private individuals) - FOR INTERNATIONAL SHIPMENTS: ART REGIE TRANSPORT / [email protected] / (01) 58 61 37 33 Collection from the Poitiers auction room during opening hours (except on the day of the sale) by yourself or a third party of your choice, with your receipt. **From 21 May 2024, the auction house will charge a storage fee for any lot not collected 15 days after the sale.

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