Léon Comerre
1850-1916

Léon-François Comerre was born in 1850, in Trélon France.

Commere studied with Colas in Lille, and Cabanet at l’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Commerre won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1875, the most treasured prize in the art world for 300 years. It led to a scholarship at the Villa de Medicis, Académie France in Rome.

He won prizes the Paris Salons in 1875, 1881, and at the l’Exposition Universalle d’Anvers in 1885. He also won prizes at exhibitions in Philadelphia in 1876, Melbourne in 1881, and Sydney in 1897. He exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes Français. He was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1903.

Comerre painted decorative works for many public spaces in Paris such as the Théâtre d’Odéon, l’Hotel Dufayel and the Sorbonne. He also did paintings for public buildings in Lyon, and Saumur.

Comerre was an academician of a grand scale. He epitomized the spirit of La Belle Époque; he painted the theatrical, the beautiful, and the sensual. Like many of his contemporaries he became fascinated with the culture of North Africa, and many of his canvases are in the genre of the Orientalists. He painted many portraits but his passion was better expressed in his nude coquettes.

Comerre is represented in many museums, including Musée du Petit Palais, and Musée du Luxemburg in Paris, and museums in Avignon, Béziers, Lille, Strasbourg and Troyes. His works are in museums in Algeria, the United States, and Romania

His atelier of over a hundred paintings and more than a hundred drawings was sold at auction in Paris in 2003. Amazingly this atelier was kept intact since Comerre’s death in 1916. The family of the artist published a book in 1980 that catalogues his atelier.