Louis Marie de Schryver

LOUIS-MARIE DE SCHRYVER 1862 - Paris - 1942 Louis-Marie de Schryver was born in Paris on 12th October 1862, the son of a well-known journalist. Precociously talented, he exhibited his first works at the Salon, two flower paintings, in 1876 at the age of thirteen. The following year he studied briefly with the still life and genre painter Philippe Rousseau. In 1880 he won a bronze medal at the Sydney World Fair with Lilas. Schryver painted still lifes, portraits and genre scenes, becoming a member of the Société des Artistes Français in 1888. In 1886 he began to paint scenes of Parisian life, a genre in which Jean Béraud (1849-1935) had also found great success. In 1891 Schryver entered the atelier of the genre and still life painter Gabriel Ferrier (1847-1914) and received a third-class medal at the Salon for La fin d’une rève. Schryver had a studio in the Rue Pergolèse until 1900, when he built a house in the fashionable suburb of Neuilly. He began to paint genre pieces, often including flower sellers and markets, as in his earlier work, but with the protagonists in eighteenth century dress. Highly popular, these works reflected the Rococo Revival taste of the Belle Epoque. In 1902 Schryver caused a scandal at the Salon with a painting entitled Lesbiennes, rather as Béraud had done in 1891 with Mary Magdalene visiting the Pharisee (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), with its modern-dress Biblical story satirizing contemporary morals. In the first decade of the twentieth century Schryver became enamoured with the cutting-edge sport of motor racing, exhibiting L’arrivée du vainqueur au Premier Prix de l’Automobile Club at the 1907 Salon des Artistes Indépendents. He captured the sensation of speed with more fluid brushstrokes and with the aid of photographs. These works found few buyers and by 1910 Schryver had reverted to his Parisian street scenes. He also painted landscapes, travelling to the Rhineland on several occasions between 1919 and 1925. The work of Louis-Marie de Schryver is represented in the Musée de Cambrai; the Musée de la Voiture, Compiègne; the Musée de l’Armée, Paris; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris; the Musée Tavet-Delacour, Pontoise and the Musée de Tourcoing.