Guerrier – Parisian Woman in Front of the Moulin Rouge

Victor Guerrier
(1893 Lyon – 1941)

PARISIAN WOMAN IN FRONT OF THE MOULIN ROUGE,

Watercolour and gouache on paper, mounted on canvas, 65 x 54 cm
Signed lower left: V. Guerier

Victor Guerrier was born in Lyon, where he also received his education. He spent most of his life in Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d’Or in the Rhône department, not far from Lyon. Anyone who thinks this was the ideal setting for becoming a landscape painter is mistaken. Guerrier chose Parisian life, especially the beautiful, elegant and fashionable Parisian woman, as his subject and revived the Belle Epoque in his paintings in the 1920s and 1930s. He drew inspiration from James Tissot, Giovanni Boldini, Edouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among others.

The painting ‘Parisian Woman in Front of the Moulin Rouge’ evokes the sophisticated world of the boulevards and cabarets between the Champs-Élysées and the Moulin Rouge around 1900, when Paris was the undisputed and unrivalled capital of art, elegance and savoir vivre.