Frank Will (1900 - 1951)

Painter and watercolourist. He was born in Nanterre (Hauts de Seine) in 1900. Son of the painter Frank Boggs of American origin, Frank-Will signed at the beginning Franque, William Frank, or only Frank; it is in 1919 that he definitively adopted his pseudonym. Between 1914 and 1918 he stayed with his father on the Boulevard de Clichy. In 1916, he devoted himself more especially to watercolours, which constituted the best of his work, more so than the sometimes heavy and impastoed oils, except perhaps for the last ones. The following year he met Gen Paul, whom he influenced in his early years, and Leprin, who became his friends.

Pierre Bureau, in his book on Leprin, tells us that Frank-Will, who received in 1926, the sum of 80,000 francs in cash, went to "place them" at Manière's, rue Caulaincourt, and he was responsible for deducting from this sum the cost of his drinks and those of his friends. Needless to say, it only took a few months to use up the inheritance. Denis Coisne, from Bourg-en-Bresse, has published the only known monograph of an artist who is often better than his reputation as a facile painter. It must be said that his production was abundant for a career that was, all in all, rather short, as he died at the age of 50.

His watercolours could be seen at Georges Petit (1929), at Terrisse, Keller and Yvonel, as well as at Henri Bureau in his gallery at 54, rue de Rochechouart. Montmartre and Paris were his favourite subjects, but he also painted seascapes, ships and galleons, the Normandy coast (1922), orchestras (1927), the provinces, Moret-sur-Loing, the Paris region, Mantes (1928 and 1938), "bacchanals" (1941), and Morocco (1948). He was buried in Père-Lachaise in 1951, near his parents.