Lucien Emile Porcheron (1876 - 1957)

Lucien Émile Porcheron was born in Grand-Pressigny on 3 January 1876 to a bricklayer father. He obtained a scholarship to continue his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Tours, where he confirmed his talents so well with his first teacher, Félix Laurent, that he was admitted to the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1894. He was a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme, an academic painter fiercely opposed to the Impressionists, whom he described as "a disgrace to French art"! In Gérôme's class and in the artistic circle of the time, the young Porcheron met two other students who were to achieve fame: Henri Matisse and George Braque. He was then a student of Gabriel-Ferrier in 1903-1904. At the same time (1900, 1902 and 1904), he took part in competitions for art applied to industry, organised by the City of Tours, and won several prizes for his cabinet-making work.

This artist, although unknown to the majority of Tourangeaux, was nevertheless a post-impressionist painter of great quality. His seascapes of Belle-lle-en-Mer, his light-flooded canvases painted in Saint-Tropez, and above all his landscapes and rustic scenes of Touraine bear witness to an undeniable talent and a rare maturity. Especially since Lucien Porcheron is not only a great painter. A complete artist, a jack-of-all-trades, he produces enamels, sculpts, makes furniture, violins, spinning wheels and even creates clothes... He is certainly not an easy character. Fiercely independent, with a stern eye and a hard tooth, those who knew him remember. Intelligent, wholehearted, he is willingly boorish while remaining deeply human. Cultivating a sense of beauty, he never sought fame and was reluctant to sell his paintings all his life. In 1992, his studio was sold at Drouot, dispersing 124 paintings.