Pierre Brissaud, born 23 December 1885, was a French Art Deco illustrator, painter, and engraver.
Brissaud was born in Paris, his father was Docteur Edouard Brissaud, a student of Docteur Charcot. His older brother Jacques Brissaud was a portrait and genre painter and his uncle Maurice Boutet de Monvel illustrated the fables of La Fontaine, songbooks for children and a life of Joan of Arc. A first cousin was the celebrated artist and celebrity portrait painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel.
He was trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and Atelier Fernand Cormon in Montmartre, Paris.
His fellow Cormon students were his brother Jacques, André-Édouard Marty, Charles Martin and Georges Lepape. Students at the workshop drew, painted and designed wallpaper, furniture and posters. Earlier, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh, and Henri Matisse had studied and worked there. In 1907 he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne.
In 1914, the American edition of Vogue magazine published an article, under the title ‘Beau Brummels of the Brush’, lauding a group of French fashion illustrators - including Brissaud, George Barbier, Paul Iribe, Lepape, Martin and Bernard Boutet de Monvel - whom they named ‘The Knights of the Bracelet’. As the article further noted, ‘The artist has discovered the couturier, and vice versa, and they find that they were not so very far apart after all; one uses paints as a medium and the other silks and satins.’
Brissaud is best known for his pochoir (stencil) prints for the fashion magazine Gazette du Bon Ton published by Lucien Vogel, Paris. Many of his illustrations are realistic leisure scenes of the well-to-do. They illustrate the designs of Paris fashion houses such as Jeanne Lanvin, Chéruit, House of Worth, and Doucet.
Brissaud's illustrations appeared in Vogue after it bought Bon Ton in 1925, as well as House & Garden, Vanity Fair and Fortune.
He also received commissions for books including Madame Bovary, Manon Lescaut, Mémoires de Saint-Simon, the autobiographical novels of Anatole France, Two gentlemen of Verona and many others.
Pierre Brissaud died 17 October 1964, aged 79 years old. Brissaud is best remembered as one of the leading illustrators of the Art Deco period in France.
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