Biographies

Lucien Simon (1861 – 1945) A well-known painter in oils and watercolors, his work was praised by Huntly Carter in the April 21, 1910 issue of ,. Carter mentioned “Lucien Simon’s clever impression of peasant life . . . in which one can hear the very movements.” He first exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Français, showing portraits and religious subjects, and later at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He discovered Brittany in 1890 when he married the sister of the painter André Dauchez and came to visit frequently, staying in her parents’ house. In 1901 he bought a house for himself and his wife–a building that had been a semaphor station. He lived and worked there for the rest of his life, and the conservateur du musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, André Cariou, produced a book about his work, with many illustrations, in 1924. According to Cariou, Simon was ” incontestablement le peintre le plus important du Pays bigouden.” With Dauchez and he formed a small group, La Bande Noire, because of the generally dark tonality of their work. The term (or less frequently “the Nubians,” in contrast to the Nabis painters) became associated with the group following the exhibition of Charles Cottet’s at the Salon of 1894 in Paris. The New Age (NA 6.25:595) Charles Cottet The Burial