Eugène Galien Laloue – Bords de la Seine près du châtelet

Eugène Galien-Laloue was a skilled and productive artist. Particularly when working in gouache and producing small-scale works. He painted almost exclusively the most picturesque spots of Paris, notably the Grands-Boulevards. He enjoyed a considerable reputation in the early years of the 20th century. Painting in the happy pre-war period when the city was filled with omnibuses and carriages. His work evokes the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Paris and retains a documentary value. He also painted landscapes of Normandy, Seine-et-Marne, Marseilles, Italy and Venice. In 1914 he began painting military scenes.

Galien-Laloue is known to have used various pseudonyms, among which were J. Liévin and Liévin. This raises the question of whether the painter Jacques Liévin, to whom paintings on the same themes as those of Eugène Galien-Laloue have been attributed, was also merely a pseudonym of the latter. Jacques Liévin is said to have studied under Léon Germain Pelouse in the early years of the 20th Century. While Galien-Laloue is believed to have studied under one Charles Laloue. However, no evidence of the existence of Charles Laloue has been found. To add to the mystery, while Galien-Laloue was mainly a watercolourist and gouache painter, Jacques Liévin worked mainly in oil. It is, therefore, possible that Galien-Laloue used this false identity specifically for his oil paintings.