Lucien René Mignon - Paintings (1865-1944)

Lucien René Mignon (1865-1944) is a French painter, illustrator, lithographer and pastellist, who was one of the first pupils and disciples of Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Born September 13, 1865 in Château-Gontier, Lucien Mignon attended the School of Fine Arts in Angers. He left for Paris and became a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme at the School of Fine Arts in Paris where he was admitted in 18861.

He exhibited at the Salon of French Artists in 1889 a painting entitled Une flânerie sentimentale2. He then exhibited with the National Society of Fine Arts (SNBA) from 1895 drawings and paintings of landscapes inspired by Angers; he lived at that time in Paris at 79 rue Dulong3. In 1898, at this same salon, he exhibited three canvases, including landscapes inspired by Fontainebleau. In 1902, he divided his time between rue du Cardinal Lemoine in Paris and Montigny-sur-Loing, which inspired him with landscapes that he exhibited at the SNBA of which he was a member. In 1908, he presented La Liseuse there for his last exhibition at this salon before the war was in 19104.

He worked for the publisher Édouard Pelletan, who exhibited his work (February 1896)5. Around 1909, he left the Fifth arrondissement of Paris and settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer, producing Provençal landscapes and motifs; he became close to Auguste Renoir, whose portrait he painted in 1913.

Mignon's style is very close to that of Renoir, and his so-called "Ingres" period6,7. From this period dates Peaches and Green Almonds, a painting exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay8.

In the 1920s, he continued to exhibit at the SNBA. He has also done commissioned work for the Ministry of Public Works related to historic buildings.

Married, he had a son, René, who married in 1925 Jacqueline Proust, the daughter of the painter and decorator Maurice Proust (1867-1944), who was very close to Lucien9.

He died at his home in the 7th arrondissement of Paris on March 13, 1944.

In October 1919, shortly before Renoir's death, an American gallery owner, Mr. Miller, acquired drawings by Mignon signed by him. A few months later, 130 drawings by Mignon appear on the American market, but... with Renoir's signature. The fraudulent sale took place in New York in the name of a supposed "Baroness Zimmermann", who died in 1918. It took the intervention of experts like Charles Lewis Hind and Joseph Pennell to demonstrate the scam: the baroness did not exist , and the drawings were of Mignon, which had not asked for anything