Gauthier, Camille - Biography

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Camille Gauthier's career begins by 1900-1901, at the same time as the creation of the association School of Nancy of which he becomes one of the members. The young cabinet maker will completely know how to take advantage of the experiences of his elder fellows to develop his own creations where the artistic innovations are perfectly mastered and organized with talent in a mass production. The naturalistic furniture of the School of Nancy is so going to be diffused to a more modest clientele and to participate in the improvement of the living environment.

Camille Gauthier was born in 1870 in Norroy-lès-Pont-à-Mousson where his father practises as farmer. At the age of 18, he enters the School of Fine Arts of Nancy where he follows in the section " Classic art and Nature ", Jules Larcher's courses, then director of the school.


From 1891 till 1893, Camille Gauthier is a pupil at the School of the Decorative arts of Paris. In his return in Nancy, it is hired by Louis Majorelle as draftsman in the engineering consulting firm.

He sets up his own business in 1901 and is up to the executive committee of the School of Nancy.

If, as Gallé and Majorelle, he mechanizes his workshops, he attempts almost exclusively to produce rather functional and simple furniture, logics of construction and contemporary by their naturalistic decoration.

The absence of stores, warehouses, but the gallery of permanent exhibition situated in the company and especially catalogs illustrated with mail-order selling allow him to practise attractive factory prices.

The craze of the public stands out although, if Gauthier was not a leading creator, his marketing practice and the difficult balance which he reaches between the formal research and the quality of execution linked to a mass production, stand him out as one of the modern figures of the Art Nouveau in Nancy.