ROCHE Camille (1894-1948) Delicate nude, seated woman Charcoal and red chalk

ROCHE Camille (1894-1948) Nu femme assise Charcoal and red chalk, signed lower right 31 x 33 cm on cardboard
Born in Paris in 1894, Camille Roche grew up in a family that predestined him for an artistic career. His father, Odilon Roche (1868-1947), was a painter from Châteauneufsur-Loire who exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, but whose main activity was as an art and antiques dealer. In particular, he sold objects imported from China and Persia in a successful store on rue Navarin (IXth arrondissement).
His education, economic prosperity and connections enabled him to provide an artistic education for his three children, Camille, Serge (1898-1988) and Lucette (1901-1996). His eldest child was precocious and quickly showed a real talent for drawing and painting, which he supported by exhibiting his first paintings at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, when Camille was just eleven years old.

He also rented him a studio and encouraged him to pursue his pictorial research on his own, moving away from the rigor imposed by official institutions. Armed with this unique training, the young man received his first decorating commissions in 1913, designing large Oriental-inspired frescoes to decorate the apartments of his father's clients and friends, including the writer Colette and her husband, the journalist Henry de Jouvenel, and Mademoiselle Chanel.
Mobilized at the outbreak of the First World War, Camille Roche had to put this promising start to his career on hold to join the front line. Wounded in the leg in 1915, he had to undergo several operations that narrowly avoided amputation and kept him bedridden for several months. Although he eventually recovered his health, the physical and psychological suffering associated with this difficult experience left him with lasting scars.

In the early 1920s, he naturally joined the Société des Artistes Décorateurs and the Société des Peintres et Sculpteurs Animaliers Français, exhibiting regularly with them.
His works were very well received by the French and foreign press, he received several awards, became laureate of the first class of the Florence Blumenthal Foundation and saw some of his paintings enter the collections of the Musée du Luxembourg.

He was also approached by the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, with whom he began a collaboration that would last many years, notably for the 1925 and 1937 Paris International Expositions, for which he created Le Paradis terrestre, a monumental panel
a monumental ceramic panel, followed by a boudoir made entirely of ice and porcelain with the participation of his brother Serge.
The early 1930s marked a turning point in his personal life. He divorced his first wife and married an American, Janet Webster. They had three children: Stéphan, Juliette and Claude-Andrée. The couple decided to leave the capital and move to the family estate in Châteauneuf, where Camille Roche set up his new studio.
This extra space enabled him to start making large screens, most often featuring birds, which he regularly sent to animal artists in Paris.
This was also the decade of Camille's prolific collaboration with his younger brother, Serge Roche. The latter took over his father's store and became a very fashionable decorator. He called on Camille to help him with a number of interior design projects, including that of his private mansion on rue Las Cases (7th arrondissement).
Together, they explored new technical processes and organized exhibitions featuring painted glass panels decorated with stucco, screens with gold and silver backgrounds and terrestrial globes in smoked glass and silver mirror. Their work fascinated and earned Camille Roche several important commissions, the most notable of which was that requested by Lady and Lord Cholmondeley for their villa "Le Roc" in Golfe-Juan.
The artist was commissioned to design the decor for the dining room, salon and salle fraîche, for which he created lush trompe-l'oeil gardens and aquatic ornaments.
This creative boom was brutally interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. After several months of exile and the isolation of the Roche family in Châteauneuf, Janet was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Ravensbrück camp in Germany. She died there at the end of 1944, leaving her husband devastated by grief.
After the Liberation, he tried to resume his work by taking part in a few exhibitions, but torment afflicted him and his health declined rapidly. His worrying condition forced him to return to Paris to live with his brother, where he died a few months later in 1948.

Forgotten for a time, the produ

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