Masterpiece: Figures at the Harbour, 1927 Modern Industrial Cityscape by Saint Exupery's Friend Lamotte French Oil on Canvas

A wonderfully modern and dynamic early 20th Century cityscape, depicting figures - notably a woman with a bicycle chatting to a friend - at a harbour.

It is a work by French-American Bernard Lamotte (1903-1983), the gifted and celebrated artist who was Antoine de Saint Exupéry's close friend from art school in the 1920s. There are anecdotes of the two young men celebrating in the Jazz Bars and night clubs in the Paris of the "Années Folles", of Lamotte sketching Antoine as the latter was writing, and of the both of them speeding in de Saint Exupéry's Bugatti: "I learnt that day what it was like to be flying" said Lamotte about the experience.

The work presented here was painted in 1927, the year Lamotte had his first solo exhibition in Paris, during which he sold a whopping 27 pictures.

Bernard moved to New York in 1936, and within one year of his arrival received several mural commissions including and exhibitions including a one man show at the Wildenstein Gallery.

Other shows included the Art Institute of Chicago in 1941, the Carstairs Gallery in New York City where his work was presented annually from 1941 into the 1950s, and a solo exhibition at the Palm Beach Gallery in 1965. Like Pierre Sicard and Grigory Gluckmann, Lamotte was represented by the Dalzell-Hatfield Gallery in Los Angeles.

Lamotte's atelier was located above the "La Grenouille" restaurant , where fellow expatriate French artists and famed New York personalities congregated, including Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, and Marlene Dietrich. The studio he and his wife shared became a bohemian haven and was coined Le Bocal (“The Fishbowl”). The Fishbowl was one of the places where Saint-Exupéry worked on Le Petit Prince. In fact: de Saint Exupéry nearly commissioned his friend Lamotte to do the illustrations for The Little Prince, but eventually decided to do them himself.Lamotte however did create the illustrations for Saint Exupéry's "Flight to Arras".

Lamotte created a mural for the White House pool for John F. Kennedy, which is now preserved in the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston. Lamotte's work can be found in the Tokyo Museum, Luxembourg Museum, Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, and the French Embassy in Finland. Private collections include those of Joseph P. Kennedy, Alfred Barnes, and Anton Dalhuijsen, among others.

Our painting measures 54 x 65 cm for the canvas alone. The overall framed size in a period hand carved frame is 68 x 79 cm.

Nous parlons français, und wir sprechen auch Deutsch! Paintings may be viewed in Norwich and in Paris, as well as in London and Cambridge by appointment. Please contact us if you would like further details and images of an artwork.