Adolphe Valette 1876-1942

Tita, the Artist's Son

Charcoal Drawing
22¾ x 16¾ ins (57.79 x 42.55 cms)

Price: £2,975.00

Provenance

Clark Art, via Joseph Fitton collection. Fitton was a friend of L.S.Lowry who recommended to him to purchase works by Valette.

Exhibition History

Exhibitied at Tib Gallery exhibtion , Oct 1976. This seminal exhibition re-launched the works of Valette, which had been forgotten. Simultaneously, the Manchester Art Gallery held an Adolphe Valette exhibition.

Montbrison (France) Musée d' Allard, Oct 2010 - March 2011
The Lowry, Adolphe Valette, A Pioneer of Impressionism in Manchester, Oct 2011 - Jan 2022

Literature

Cecilia Lyon, Adolphe Valette, Phillimore, 2006 pg 42

General Notes

Adolphe Valette met one of his students, Gabriela da Bolivar, a young Venezuelan lady, at Manchester Municipal School of Art and they soon became very close. Valette married Gabriela on 13 October 1909, when he was 32 and she was 23.

Their son Pierre Antoine Ferdinand Valette was born on 12 August 1910 and was very quickly nicknamed Peter or Tita; the love of his father is very clear from the numerous paintings and drawing he did of him as a child.

Gabriela had delicate health and died very young, aged only 36, on 13 March 1917; she died of pleurisy and pulmonary consumption, leaving behind her son Pierre, then aged six, and her widowed husband. Valette was overcome by immense grief at this loss.

In 1929, on 9 July, Valette experienced the great sadness of the loss of his only son Pierre, who died in Manchester at the age of 18, suffering from acute tubercular meningitis.