Grenier – Bouquet of Dahlias

Albert Grenier

(1858 Neuilly-sur-Seine – 1925 Paris)

BOUQUET OF DAHLIAS

Oil on canvas

81 x 59.5 cm

Signed and dated lower right: Grenier 1925

Provenance: Estate of Albert Grenier; Lilly Grenier (née Amelie Sans) and her heirs

Albert Grenier, a painter and graphic artist from Toulouse, remains one of the great unknowns of the art world. Yet we know his face better than that of many other artists, thanks to magnificent portraits painted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1887, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Louis Anquetin (1889, private collection), with whom he had been close friends since their student days in Fernand Cormon's studio in Montmartre. Anquetin titled his pastel portrait of his friend “Graceful Profile of Mr. Albert Grenier,” and what we see in both portraits is indeed a delicate, graceful gentleman who still exudes elegance even in shirtsleeves. Generosity seems to have been one of his defining characteristics. He shared a studio with Toulouse-Lautrec at 19 bis rue Fontaine in Montmartre, allowed him to stay in his apartment during the winter, and regularly invited all his friends, including Van Gogh, Laval, Suzanne Valadon, and Maurice Utrillo, to his two homes in Villiers-sur-Morin and to lavish parties that he hosted in his Paris studio with his partner, Amélie Sans, known as Lili, an actress, watercolorist, and, like Valadon, a very popular model for his painters. Is Grenier's work so rarely encountered because he didn't have to make a living from painting and painted purely for pleasure? It is possible. The casually sketched, neo-impressionistic, grandly vibrant flower still lifes that we were able to acquire had never before been on the market, but all came from Lili Grenier's estate and hung in the Greniers' living rooms.