Laure-Stella Bruni (1890-1975) French/Swiss, Oil on Canvas. Depicts a tree-lined road. Signed bottom right. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Overall: 36 1/4 X 47 in. 

Sight: 34 1/4 X 45 1/4 in. 

# 3763 . 

Laure-Stella Victorine Bruni was born in Liège, Belgium on January 28th, 1886. Her family was Italian-speaking Swiss musicians from the Ticino region. She was the great-granddaughter of the painter Fiodor Bruni and the daughter of the pianist and conductor Constantin Bruni, whose work took the family to France when Bruni was ten. She became a naturalized French citizen in 1898, and spent most of her childhood preparing to focus on music like her parents. She discovered painting in Antwerp in 1903 when her family moved there for her father to take over as artistic director of the Royal Theatre. By the time the family moved to Geneva in 1908 for him to take over the Grand Theatre, she had left music behind entirely to focus on oils and watercolors, although she did exhibit some of her works in the lobby of the Nice Opera when her father was in charge of it in 1925. Her first solo exhibition was at the Moos Gallery in Geneva, Switzerland in 1909. During World War I she continued to paint in the neutral region, and corresponded with artists in France looking for advice and recommendations for representation. In 1920, once the war had ended, she got her chance, exhibiting landscapes and flower paintings in Paris. Several exhibitions were dedicated to her at the Georges Petit Gallery in 1923 and ‘24. She exhibited a painting each year at the Salon des Indépendants from 1927 to ‘29. The opening of this exhibition attracted government figures, aristocrats, ambassadors, and art critics, many of whom acquired pieces from her in the following years. In 1927, she married René Gillouin, a man of letters and deputy chief of staff to the president of the municipal council of Paris. She stopped painting for a few years, before exhibiting again from 1935 onward at the Salon des Indépendants and new galleries like the Charpentier. At the start of the French Occupation the Nazis reportedly searched her home and stole several paintings. Her stepson, Marc, died in 1940, which left her husband in a long depression, and they decided to relocate to Switzerland for his health in 1943. Her exhibitions in this country, particularly maritime scenes along the rivers and lakes in Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, and Lugano were well-received, although by 1948 her work in Neuchâtel and Bienne began to show a darker atmosphere. Her husband moved back to Paris that same year, while she divided her time between there and a workshop in Ticino. She eventually divorced Gillouin on December 18th, 1958 and lived full-time at a home studio in Les Brenets, in the canton of Neuchâtel. She died in August, 1975 in Locle, Switzerland from injuries sustained during a fall while hiking in the nearby countryside.

Commensurate with age.