Raoul Du Gardier

Born in Wiesbaden in 1871, he entered the Beaux Arts in 1888 and was a student, in particular, of Gustave Moreau.

Like other former students of Gustave Moreau, he participated in the Salon d'Automne created in 1905 as a founding member of the Salon.

The quality of his work earned him the appointment of painter of the Navy in 1923. This status, as well as the financial means, protected him from want and led him to make two world tours which would be as many sources of inspiration. His work thus consists of numerous seascapes and orientalist scenes.

The outbreak of the Second World War marked the decline of his health. He was no longer able to move independently or paint; his governess, the victim of a traffic accident in Paris, was no longer able to assist him. Very diminished, without income, he left his studio on Avenue de Tourville in Paris to join Pornic, which he would never leave again.

When he died in 1952, due to the lack of descendants and a gallery owner to defend him, his work fell into relative oblivion. For more than half a century, no monograph or exhibition was devoted to him. The rediscovery of Raoul du Gardier's works is due to the return to grace at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century of orientalist painters and the emergence of the concept of "traveling painters".