Pastel on paper
47.5 x 61 cm
Signed lower left
Whilst lesser known than some of his Post-Impressionist contemporaries, Laugé was right at the epicentre of modern innovation. Initially embracing the dotted brushsmarks of Pointillism, his approach evolved more to focus on the nuanced depiction subtle light. Here, his sensitive use of pastel captures all of the light’s shimmering and dazzling luminosity.
Achille Laugé was the son of well-to-do farmers in the town of Cailhau, near Carcassonne. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Toulouse, where he met and befriended the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. In 1881, he moved to Paris to study at École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Paul Laurens. By the time he left Paris, Laugé was painting in the Divisionist style, which he experimented with throughout the remainder of his career. Laugé exhibited three paintings in Paris at the 1894 Salon des Indépendants and in the same year featured in an exhibition alongside Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Sérusier, Roussel, Toulouse-Lautrec and Vuillard in Toulouse.
His friend Bourdelle noted that ‘Laugé’s art is one of great sensitivity and controlled reason; he is a master of light.’ The critic Gustave Geffroy, wrote of his landscapes that ‘everything is filled with sunlight, but through a harmonious prism; to an acute and discerning vision is added the delicate ethereal quality of imagination.’
