PROUVÉ Victor

Victor PROUVÉ (1858-1943) - A versatile artist who practiced all techniques, he was a painter, engraver, sculptor and decorator. Originally from Nancy, his early arrangements for drawing earned him a scholarship in 1877 at the École des beaux-arts in Paris, where he would be the pupil of Cabanel. He exhibited at the Salons des artistes français from 1885. Back in his hometown, he was a major participant in the movement for the renewal of the decorative arts and succeeded Émile Gallé as head of Nancy's school. We owe Victor Prouvé compositions with simplified lines, painted in light colours, and some carved monuments (decorations of the official buildings of Nancy). But it is rather his close collaboration with the great master glassmaker Émile Gallé that he owes his fame. Prouvé provided him with models of figures for his decorative vases, notably those of the famous Vase d'Orphee of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris, which bears the engraved signature "Émile Gallé Victor Prouvé", and which was presented at the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Émile Gallé himself described in his Writings for Art the Proven Vase that he offered to his collaborator when he was promoted knight of the Legion of Honour in 1891. After the premature death of Émile Gallé, Victor Prouvé guarded, from 1904 to 1913, the artistic direction of Nancy's establishments which continued to produce many vases in the same naturalistic style; these vases still bear the mark "Galle", but this one is preceded by a star. Appointed director of the École des beaux-arts de Nancy in 1919, Prouvé helped train artists of the next generation.