Idbury Prints: An online gallery of original fine art prints

WILLIAM MALHERBE (French / 1884-1952)

William Malherbe was born in Senlis, Oise. His experiences in WWI marked him deeply; Time Magazine found him “after four years in the war, almost pathologically shy.” This war experience was shared by his brother Henry, a writer and music critic, and in 1925 William illustrated Henry’s Goncourt Prize-winning war memoir La Flamme au Poing with copper engravings. These striking images were engraved by the specialist engraver Achille Ouvré (French, 1872-1951) from drawings by William Malherbe. Malherbe’s artistic success came after he was taken up in the 1930 by the gallery Durand-Ruel, whose fortune had been made by its backing of the Impressionists. In 1939, at the age of 55, William Malherbe emigrated to the USA, where he lived on a farm in Vermont until 1948 when he returned to France. His exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery were highly successful, and his colourful post-Impressionist Vermont scenes, full of light and paint-flecked pleasure, are still highly sought-after. Some even consider William Malherbe an American artist, but his work is essentially rooted in the French post-Impressionist tradition of Bonnard and late Renoir. As a painter, William Malherbe preferred to paint on wood rather than canvas, and refused to varnish any of his work until at least ten years had passed, believing that oil paint took that long to completely dry. See: Jean Cassou, William Malherbe, 1948.