Georges DE FEURE French Art Nouveau Glass Pitcher, 1910

FRENCH ART NOUVEAU GLASS PITCHER - Ref 08514

by Georges DE FEURE (Paris)

France, ca.1910

Height : 6.9"(17.5cm), Width : 6.9"(17.5cm), Depth : 5.9"(15cm)

Signed "G. de Feure" at the bottom (see photo)

Excellent condition !

Georges de Feure, pseudonym of Georges Joseph van Sluÿters born on September 6, 1868 in Paris and died on November 26, 1943 in the same city, is a painter, poster artist and designer of furniture, decorative objects and french aeroplanes.

Georges Joseph van Sluijters is of Dutch origin on his father's side and Belgian on his mother's side, born in Liège. He was born in Paris in 1868, but the family was forced to emigrate to the Netherlands in 1870 at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. His father was an architect.

In 1886, Georges de Feure was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, which he left after two days. He came to Paris in 1889 and settled in Montmartre; he joined the Parisian bohemian scene. His circle of intimates included the composers Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Erik Satie. His pictorial work was definitely inspired by the poems of Charles Baudelaire and the novels of Georges Rodenbach. In the 1890s, he was recognized by Puvis de Chavannes as one of the most important painters of the French symbolist movement. To earn a living, he became an illustrator for Le Courrier français, Le Figaro illustré and for two periodicals of the Goupil & Cie publishing house, Le Théâtre and Les Modes. Georges de Feure participated in the Salon des Cent and four of his posters were published in Les Maîtres de l'affiche.

His work is characterized by numerous representations of the femme fatale, a theme found in all the works of the Art Nouveau movement.

His reputation as a symbolist painter and his experience as a poster artist led the art dealer Siegfried Bing to approach him in order to entrust him with the creation of the façade of the "Art Nouveau pavilion" at the 1900 Universal Exhibition held in Paris. In addition, Bing entrusted de Feure, along with Eugène Gaillard and Édouard Colonna, with the creation of two interiors in this same pavilion. The furniture and decorative objects he designed for the boudoir were praised by critics, who saw them as a representation of the quintessence of French art. Their delicacy and their very feminine grace were praised. Gabriel Mourey, for the magazine Les Arts décoratifs, described them as "one of the most exquisite and perfect decorative ensembles that our era has created". Three years earlier, he had written a long article on Feure in The Studio.

Four of his posters were reproduced in the magazine Les Maîtres de l'affiche (1895-1900), namely: 5e exposition du Salon des Cent, Magasin des nouveautés Jeanne d'Arc, Le Journal des ventes and Thés du Palais Indien. He also contributed to Cocorico.

Presented in 1892 at Le Barc de Boutteville in the circle of symbolist painters, he participated in the Salon de la Rose-Croix in 1893 and 1894 and in the Munich Secession in 1896. A major retrospective of his work was held in Paris in 1903, then he went to Hamburg and The Hague.

During the first decades of the 20th century, he continued to create decorative ensembles (evolving from the Art Nouveau style to the Art Deco style), then in 1909 he founded De Feure & Deperdussin (DFD & Cie), a company building monoplane aeroplanes with reverse retropropulsion, with Armand Deperdussin as a partner, who would eventually dismiss him, before being arrested for a shady affair of speculation. Two models came out of the workshops, the DFD1 and the DFD2, the design of which Louis Béchereau was associated. During the first tests, at the end of 1910, Georges de Feure had a serious accident: he withdrew from the business.

He then turned to making costumes and sets for the theater, particularly in London where he lived during the First World War.

During the 1920s, he was an artistic advisor for Madeleine Vionnet's stores, then for the Schwarz-Haumont establishments, specialized in the construction of artistic metal structures.

In February 1942, after a long illness, he asked the Ministry of Fine Arts to acquire two of his paintings for the national collection, which was refused. He died on November 26, 1943 in occupied Paris and is buried in the Batignolles Cemetery.