Fernand Allard l'Olivier

African scene

Bathers in the North Sea

Fernand Allard l'Olivier (actually Florent-Joseph-Fernand Allard , born July 12, 1883 in Tournai , † June 9, 1933 in Yanongé , Belgian Congo ) was a Belgian painter who was also active in the countries of Africa .

Life

Fernand Allard l'Olivier was born into a family of artists and craftsmen from Tournai. His father Charles Allard and his three uncles Adolphe, Auguste and Charles Vasseur were all artists and had a lithography company. His father was also a professor of watercolor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tournai.

At the age of 14 he was sent to an apprenticeship in Brussels to the Van Campenhout printing works in Molenbeek to learn the trade of lithographer.

In 1901 he came to Paris , studied at the Académie Julian with William Bouguereau and Jean-Paul Laurens , but it was only the lesser-known painter Jules Adler (1865–1952) who became his master and friend.

Fernand chose the name of his maternal grandmother, L'Olivier, as a pseudonym from his earliest works.

He founded the newspaper Les Guignolades with Gustave Charlier and Gabriel-Tristan Franconi and co-founded another newspaper, La Forge , with Maurice Maeterlinck and André Gide . In 1910 he married his long-time friend Juliette Rossignol, the daughter of a bookseller.

Fernand Allard l'Olivier initially worked as a portrait painter. At that time he was also working as an art critic and posting articles on Paris fairs to the Revue de Belgique . Together with his wife he traveled to Brittany in the summer of 1912 and 1913. In 1913 they were expecting their first child and at the end of August Fernand Allard l'Olivier went alone for his first study trip from Avignon to Marseille, then to Algiers and Blidah, then to Spain and finally back to Bordeaux. In December 1913 his son André was born.

After the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the Belgian army. Around 1916 he came into their camouflage service. He also visited Belgian soldiers at the front. He brought back many sketches from the missions. In 1917 his daughter Paulette was born. In the spring of 1918 Allard l'Olivier was responsible for the exterior decoration of the De Panne theater. At the end of the war, the Allard family left Paris and settled in Brussels.

Between 1920 and 1922 he visited France, especially Corsica, and the Netherlands. In 1923 he traveled to Italy, then to Sicily and Tunisia. In 1926 he traveled to Poland and decorated an estate in Łódź . He went on a pilgrimage to Czestochowa .

In early 1928, the Belgian filmmaker Ernest Genval traveled to the Congo to make films there. He invited Fernand Allard l'Olivier to visit the Congo. Allard l'Olivier received a state subsidy of 10,000 francs and was supposed to deliver pictures for the colonial exhibition in Antwerp. At the end of March 1928 he took a liner to Alexandria , visited Cairo , crossed Egypt by train, then with a cargo ship across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to Dar es Salaam . But he did not meet Ernest Genval there. In June 1928, Allard l'Olivier was in the Great Lakes region, crossed Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika by boat, and visited Uvira and Usumbura. In mid-July he finally found Genval. They both went to Kigoma. Genval made a film under the mango tree in which Henry Morton met Stanley David Livingstone while Allard l'Olivier was painting him. At the end of July he and Genval attended the local royal procession, and he resumed contact with King Albert and Queen Elisabeth. He served as their guide during the visit to Kabalo where there was a great dance reception.

During the six months after his return, Allard l'Olivier painted in his studio from the sketches he had brought with him. In April 1929 an exhibition with 126 of his African works was opened in the “Galerie des Artistes Français”. In July 1929, the Colonial Minister commissioned 14 paintings to decorate the entrance hall of the Palais du Congo at the 1930 Art and Colonial Exhibition in Antwerp.

In 1932 Allard l'Olivier made a second trip to the Congo. From Antwerp he came to Matadi by boat . He traveled all over the country by car. In early March 1933 he exhibited around 100 of his works in Elisabethville . Before leaving, he planned two exhibitions: one in Bukavu at the end of May and one in Kinshasa at the end of June . On June 9, 1933, there was a car accident during the night. He then died by suicide. He was buried at the Yanongé Protestant Mission.

Publications

• Fernand Allard l'Olivier: L'Alphabet de la Guerre pour les Grands et les Petits. 1921 (digitized version)
• Le voyage au Congo de leurs majestés le Roi et la Reine des Belges. 1928: tp (Aquarelles et dessins d'Allard L'Olivier)

literature

• Bibliography: (digitized version)
• Jean-Pierre De Rycke: Fernand Allard l'Olivier. In: Le Congo et l'Art belge 1880–1960. La Renaissance du livre, Tournai 2003, ISBN 2-8046-0823-9 , pp. 220-223.

Web links

Commons : Fernand Allard l'Olivier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Fernand Allard l'Olivier. Biographical data and works in the Netherlands Institute for Art History (Dutch)
• Allard l'Olivier, Fernand in: Dictionnaire des peintres belges