Albert Simon Aimé Bussy (30 June 1870 – 22 May 1954) was a French painter who married the English novelist Dorothy Bussy, née Strachey. He knew and painted many members of the Bloomsbury circle.
Biography
Bussy was born in Dole and came from a family of shoemakers. He went from the drawing school in Dole to Gustave Moreau's studio in the École des beaux-arts de Paris, where he met and became friends with Henri Matisse. He received an honorable mention in 1894 at the Salon des artistes français for his Le Joueur de clarinette and Saint Georges terrassant le dragon. He showed a Portrait of Albert Machado in 1896. In 1897 he had his first solo exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris.
Later, the Bussy spouses alternated between Roquebrune and England, where they spent the summer. At that time Simon painted mostly portraits (among others, Gide, Valéry and several of the Bloomsbury group), and pastel landscapes with pastel. Later he devoted himself almost exclusively to animals, especially birds, reptiles and fish, and would observe and study them at London Zoo.[1]
Bussy was successful in the 1920s and 1930s, but his appreciation by both the public and critics declined after this time. He died in London in 1954, at the age of 88.
The contents of his study were sold at auction in 1960 by the auction house Sotheby's, and ended up dispersed among various buyers. Some pastels are now kept in the collections of National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Gallery[2] in London. His works are also found in French museums including the Musée Nationale d'art Moderne in Paris and the regional Museum of Oise.
^Bussy noted in a letter: "Every work is an invention, a poetic composition, not only decorative. In the animals I paint and in the environment around them there is no element that has not been the subject of a patient observation; My many crayon studies prove it. My animals, birds, reptiles are portraits in which I wish that any differences emerge with ever greater clarity, precision and purity. "
^Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British artists ' ', Tate Gallery, London 1981, pp. 89-90