Louis Borgeois Borgex (1873-1959)

With the exception of one work these drawings all date from around 1895 when Bourgeois, having studied at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts in Lyons and in Paris under Gerome, was mixing in the Montmartre world of the cabaret singer Aristide Bruant and, by association, Toulouse-Lautrec. While he painted and exhibited under the signature ‘L. Bourgeois-Borgex’ he also established himself as ‘L. Borgex’, a caricaturist and lithographer. The style and content of these drawings demonstrates his sympathy with the artistic tastes of the Nineties; combining an enjoyment of the subfusc world of the Symbolists and the robust life of the boulevard at night with an elegiac sense of the rural realities of Northern France. ‘Les Sardinieres’ his lithograph printed in the influential L’Estampe Moderne (1898) and his image included in the Collection des Cent (1901) demonstrate the fashionable direction in which he developed his skills as a draughtsman. By 1910 he had become best known for his advertising work and by the end of WWI he appears to have stopped work. Music remained an interest and he published a biography of Vincent d’Indy (1925).