Gaston La Touche, or de La Touche (24 October 1854 – 12 July 1913)

Gaston La Touche, or de La Touche, was a French painter, illustrator, engraver and sculptor.

His family originally came from Normandy. He was born in Saint-Cloud. His passion for art began at a very early age, and he finally convinced his parents to give him drawing lessons, which he took for ten years from a local teacher at the rate of three francs a month. His lessons had to be cancelled at the start of the Franco-Prussian War, when his family returned to Normandy to ensure their safety. This was all the formal art education he ever received.

Nevertheless, in 1875 he was able to make his debut at the Salon with a bas-relief medallion portrait of François Jules Edmond Gaud, an actor at the Comédie-Française, and several etchings. Between 1877 and 1879, he met Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet, whom he often met at the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes. It was there that he was introduced to Émile Zola, some of whose works he later illustrated.

Beginning in 1880, he produced dark-toned works in the social realist style of the Dutch masters. His first painting was shown at the Salon the following year. Félix Bracquemond, his friend and colleague, suggested that he might have greater success if he brightened his colour palette and chose different subjects, recommending Antoine Watteau and François Boucher as models. [ He also painted landscapes and portraits in the style of Puvis de Chavannes, which brought him his first major successes at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In 1891, he burned most of his early paintings.

He later received commissions to decorate the town hall in Saint-Cloud and the reception hall at the Ministry of Justice, although the latter were never installed there and are now in the Luxembourg Palace. In 1900, he was one of several artists who decorated Le Train Bleu, a famous restaurant near the Gare de Lyon. In his later years, he divided his time between his studio in Saint-Cloud and the family estates in Champsecre. Gaston La Touche was made an officer of the Legion of Honour. In 1912, he completed his last major decorative project at the “Villa Arnaga”, Edmond Rostand’s home in Cambo-les-Bains, which is now a museum. He died in Paris while working on the painting.