Deydier, born in Avignon, lived and worked in Paris. He was a painter of genre scenes and was known for his lively compositions of Parisian nightlife. According to the inscription on the verso of this painting, he lived in Montparnasse on the Avenue Denfert Rochereau. He exhibited in Paris with the Salon des Indépendants and died in Paris during the Second World War.  

Le Bal Musette is the name given to a kind of Parisian dance hall that came into its own at the end of the 19th century. Le Bal Musette’s clientele was usually working class and the music played in them had its roots in Parisian popular music, music from the Auvergne, and music which immigrants to France brought them from foreign countries. Many of these typically Parisian dance halls were found on the rue de Lappe, near Place de la Bastille. The accordion was the predominant musical instrument, and for a few sous people could dance to its plaintive music. This painting by Deydier was done during the “golden age” of Le Bal Musette, from the 1920s through the 1940s. It gives a good idea of what a Bal Musette must have looked like during their heyday. Today there is only one authentic Bal Musette’s left on the rue de Lappe in Paris, and it operates only on Sunday afternoons when a dwindling band of elderly Parisian fun-seekers gather with a defiant joie de vivre to dance to the romantic strains of the accordion just as they must have done in their youth, though perhaps a little less nimbly.  

This painting came from the distinguished collection of the scholar and writer Alain Weill, former director of the Musée de l’Affiche (The Poster Museum) of Paris, who formed an extraordinary collection of paintings and drawings having to do with night life and the world of the theater and music halls in Paris.  

 

René Deydier  1882-1942
Le Bal Musette
Oil on canvas
Signed, lower left: "Deydier"
Provenance: Ex-Collection Alain Weil, Paris - Private Collection, New York City
Canvas size: 28 X 39 inches
Frame size: 16 X 47 inches

FC00096 Price on request

 
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