Robert Poughéon

Eugène Robert Pougheon (Paris 1886-1955) studied under Jean-Paul Laurens and Albert Besnard at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and under Charles Lameire at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. He was closely associated throughout his life not only with Jean Dupas, but also with other well known artists of the Bordeaux school - René Buthaud, Jean Gabriel Domergue, Raphael Delorme, Jean Despujols and Alfred Janniot. In 1914 Pougheon won the Prix de Rome and in 1927, he was awarded the silver medal at the Paris Salon, following this two years later with a gold medal. In 1935 he started teaching at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was made director of the Villa Médicis in 1942 and later became curator of the Musée Jacquemart-André.

It was during his stay in Italy at the Villa Médicis after winning the Prix de Rome that Pougheon's work became more stylized and geometric, his nudes achieving a post-cubist sculptural monumentality akin to that of Tamara de Lempicka. While Lempicka's powerful women are often characterized by decorative references to technological advances of the era however, Pougheon's Amazones are more rooted in classical antecedents, his composition and landscape betraying the influence of Puvis de Chavannes. Like Dupas' women in Les perruches, Pougheon's Amazones are at the cutting edge of the Art Deco movement, their solidity and monumentality providing a firm contrast to the movement and transience of the natural world surrounding them.

Poughéon also illustrated books as well as providing artwork for banknotes in the French community. The images shown above are "Amazones", painted in 1926, and a plate from an edition of Goethe's Faust.