Grenier – Dahlienstrauss

Albert Grenier

(1858 Neuilly-sur-Seine-1925 Paris)

DAHLIENSTRAUSS

Oil on canvas

81 x 59.5 cm

signed and dated bottom right: Grenier 1925

Provenance: Estate of Albert Grenier;

Lilly Grenier (née Amelie Sans) and her heirs

Albert Grenier, painter and graphic artist from Toulouse, is one of the great unknowns of the art world. We know his face better than that of many other artists, as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1887, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Louis Anquetin (1889, private collection), with whom he was closely friends since their time studying at the Fernand Cormon studio on Montmartre, painted great portraits of him. Anquetin titled the pastel portrait of his friend "Gracieux Profil de M. Albert Grenier," and what we see in both portraits is indeed a delicate, graceful gentleman who still appears elegant even in shirt sleeves. Generosity seems to have been one of his special character traits. He shared the studio at 19 rue Fontaine on Montmartre with Toulouse-Lautrec, 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 houses in Villiers-sur-Morin and to lavish parties that he hosted with his partner Amélie Sans, known as Lili, who was an actress, watercolorist, and, like Valadon, a very popular model for painters, in his Paris studio.

Is it rare to encounter Grenier's works because he did not have to live off painting and painted only for pleasure? It is possible. The loosely thrown, neo-impressionistic, grandly vibrant flower still lifes that we were able to acquire had never before been on the market, but all come from Lili Grenier's estate and hung in the living spaces of the Greniers.