Art Nouveau Snake Charmer, 1920 Exquisite Provenance Arts and Craft Period Mixed Media Painting American in Paris

Perfectly encapsulating the spirit of art nouveau is this fine and intricate mixed media work in coloured inks and pencils by American artist Howard Simon.

Howard Simon was born on July 22, 1902, in New York City. Before he was fifteen, Simon knew that he wanted to be an artist. He went daily to the National Academy of Design. He then spent two years at the New York Academy of Arts and drawing for New York newspapers. By the time he was seventeen, he had saved enough money to go to Paris to live and study art for five years.

Simon studied for several years under Jacques Alexander at Académie Julian in Paris. In 1926, he met and married Charlie May Hogue, who was in Paris studying sculpture.

Simon’s career began in earnest in Paris, where he made drawings of the beggars living under the bridges. He learned also woodblock technique from Japanese instructors. Our snake charmer dates from this period, and has wonderful provenance: it belonged to Mademoiselle Jalbert, the proprietor of "Le Select", the mythical Montparnasse brasserie on the Rive gauche.

The Howards left Paris in 1928, and in 1930 moved to Arkansas, where they built a log cabin. Simon made sketches of the natives, bartering the sketches for services, food, or items they had made. Living in the hills gave Simon the models he needed to illustrate Wayman Hogue’s Back Yonder, and many of his wife’s books. He also illustrated an edition of François Rabelais’s work, François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire’s Candide, and Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose.

Simon divided his time between Arkansas and his native New York, where he served on the art faculty of New York University for twenty years. His work was exhibited at the Smithsonian as well as in New York and San Francisco and was represented abroad at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Simon was a full member of the California Society of Etchers.

Our wonderful snake charmer measures 33 x 27cm at sight and is signed at the lower left. The overall framed size in a period oak frame is 52 x 44 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.