Biography
Charles Alexandre René Picart Le Doux (b. Paris, France 1881 – d. Paris 1959) studied at the Académie Julian and École des Beaux-Arts in Paris until 1902. He lived in Montmartre and knew Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo, amongst others, including Jules Romains (1885-1972) with whom he joined the Abbaye group in Créteil and later lived with in Tours during the early 1940s. He exhibited at the Salon d’Automne from 1904 and the Salon des Indépendants as well as Charles Vildrac’s gallery and his first solo exhibition was held at the Biot Gallery in 1910. He was profoundly affected by the horrors of the First World War and it took until around 1923 for him to regain his output, thanks to meeting the sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944). He exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries then at the Carpentier and Drouant-David galleries in Paris as well as in San Francisco, New York, Rio de Janeiro, London (Ohana gallery), Berlin and Munich and a lot of international collections hold his work. He was a decorative wall painter as well a prolific portraitist and book illustrator. In 1945 he became a professor at the Académie Colarossi and at the Académie de la Grande-Chaumière in Paris, where he had begun teaching in 1927.
