The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (267 page)

(1887–1965).
Swiss-born architect, painter, designer, and writer who became a French citizen in 1930. Although chiefly celebrated as one of the greatest and most influential architects of the 20th cent., Le Corbusier also holds a small niche in the history of modern painting as one of the founders of
Purism
. Up to 1929 he painted only still life, but from that time the human figure was occasionally introduced into his compositions. He adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier in 1920, but continued to sign his paintings ‘Jeanneret’. The pseudonym derives from the name of one of his grandparents and is also a pun on his facial resemblance to a raven (French, ‘corbeau’). Apart from paintings and architecture, his enormous output included drawings, book illustration, lithographs, tapestry designs, furniture, and numerous books, pamphlets, and articles.

 
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(1864–1955).
Canadian painter, active mainly in his native St. Hilaire, Quebec. He painted still lifes and
genre
scenes, but is most notable for his church decorations. In 1897 he visited Paris, and his later work was affected by
Symbolist
ideas. He lived modestly and unambitiously away from the main centres of art, but he was inspiration to many of those who knew him, notably Paul
Borduas
.

 
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(Viscount Lee of Fareham). See
COURTAULD
.

 
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(1817–64).
English
caricaturist
and illustrator, one of the leading artists of
Punch
from 1841 until his death. He made over 3,000 pictures for
Punch
alone (including 600 cartoons) and was also particularly associated with the sporting novels of R. S. Surtees. His other book illustrations included
The Ingoldsby Legends
by R. H. Barham and Charles Dickens's
Christmas Books
. Dickens said of his pictures that they were ‘always the drawings of a gentleman’; he more than any other set the gentlemanly tone for
Punch
.

 
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(1881–1946).
French painter, mainly of figure subjects, including nudes and allegories. In 1911 he exhibited with the
Cubists
, but in about 1914 he moved to a more
Expressionist
style, although he still retained structural features derived from Cubism. He spent the First World War in the Netherlands, where he laid the basis of a European reputation and exercised considerable influence on the development of northern Expressionism (his work is better represented in Dutch collections than it is in French). After his return to Paris in 1920 he gradually abandoned his Expressionist manner for a more restrained and austere style. He is not now generally highly regarded as a painter, but he played an important role in spreading the mannerisms of Cubism.

 
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(1881–1955).
French painter and designer. From
c.
1909 he participated in the
Cubist
movement. He is generally considered one of its major masters, but his curvilinear and tubular forms (he was for a time called a ‘tubist’) contrasted with the fragmented forms preferred by
Picasso
and
Braque
. The First World War, during which he was gassed whilst serving as a stretcher-bearer, had a profound, effect on Léger. His contact with men of different social classes and different walks of life came as a revelation: ‘I was abruptly thrust into a reality which was both blinding and new’, he said. Henceforward he made it his ambition to create an art which should be accessible to all ranks of modern society. In 1920 he met
Le Corbusier
and
Ozenfant
and in the early 1920s he was associated with their
Purist
movement. His paintings were static, with the precise and polished facture of machinery, and he had a fondness for including representations of mechanical parts. During the late 1920s and 1930s he also painted single objects isolated in space and sometimes blown up to gigantic size. In the interwar years he expanded his range beyond easel painting, with murals and designs for the theatre and cinema. He was also busy as a teacher, notably at his own school, the Académie de I'Art Contemporain, and he travelled widely, making three visits to the USA in the 1930s. The connections he had made there stood him in good stead when he lived in America during the Second World War, teaching at Yale University, and at Mills College, California. Acrobats and cyclists were favourite subjects in his paintings of this time. From his return to France in 1945 his painting reflected more prominently his political interest in the working classes. But its static, monumental style remained, with flat, unmodulated colours, heavy black contours, and a continuing concern with the contrast between cylindrical and rectilinear forms. In his later career Léger worked much on large decorative commissions, notably the windows and tapestries for the church at Audincourt (1951). Many honours came to him late in life, and a museum dedicated to him opened at Biot in France in 1957. In the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Léger and Purist Paris’ (Tate Gallery, London, 1970), John Golding wrote of Léger: ‘No other major twentieth-century artist was to react to, and to reflect, such a wide range of artistic currents and movements…And yet he was to remain supremely independent as an artistic personality. Never at any moment in his career could he be described as a follower…But his originality lay basically in his ability to adapt the ideas and to a certain extent even the visual discoveries of others to his own ends.’