Adolphe Valette 1876-1942

Valette's House at La Combe, Blace

Oil on Card
8¾ x 14 ins (22.23 x 35.56 cms)

Sorry this item is sold

Provenance

Andree Valette sale, Capes Dunn Auctions, Manchester 1990.
Private Collection

General Notes

The origins of the house can be traced back to 1812, at that time it was surrounded by land of over a hectare planted with alfalfa with some land as a meadow and orchard. As with most such houses, it was built in adobe, and sheltered from the north winds.

This was a simple wine-grower's house with its own cellar, and wine fermentation vessels in the ground floor room, with the living room and bedroom on the first floor. The house was initially lived in by Adolphe Valette's mother, Madelaine, who was by then widowed . She had sold the land, and lived there in the house with her daughter Louise, who was mentally handicapped.

In 1909, Madeleine adapted the hayloft as a one-room apartment, perhaps this was to enable her son to visit and to provide a degree of independence. After Madeleine's death, the house went to her son Adolphe. He later converted the wine fermentation room into his painting studio and the attic into a storage place for his works, which he was continuing to send to Manchester.