Pastel, Sarah Bernhardt with art critic Henri Vidal attributed to Louis FOR

Louis Fortuney 1875-1951

Louis Ernest Fortuné Andrieux was a French painter, fresco artist, engraver, lithographer and pastelist born in 1875. For reasons of homonymy with Louis Andrieux, he took the pseudonym Fortuney.

A friend of Rodin, he painted with him in Cagnes-sur-mer in the south of France.

Fortuney was inspired by the sea, the lights of Brittany and the Mediterranean. He was commissioned by the French government to paint large-scale canvases to decorate the Ministry of the Navy, but was never, despite rumors, an official painter of the Navy (cf. the POM nomination book).

Fortuney painted numerous genre scenes of women in the streets of Pars, as well as seascapes. He was an expert in the use of pastels, very fashionable in the Belle Epoque, and excelled in rendering the velvety texture of fabrics and skin tones.

In addition to his very Parisian inspiration, his seascapes and port scenes sketched on the spot display an incisive vigor that contrasts with the virtuosity of his genre scenes.

Fortuney died in 1951