William Didier-Pouget (French 1864-1959)

William Didier-Pouget began his formal art training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in his birth city, Toulouse.  He later studied at the Academy of Paris under the famed French landscape painter, Jean Baudit.  The painting he entered for his first exhibition, the Salon of 1866, seems atypical of his work in that it was a rather somber image; however, it did foreshadow the direction of the artist's oeuvre in the attention paid to atmospheric elements.

It was the countryside of Southern France that eventually led Didier-Pouget to focus on light and color in his landscapes.  During his career, he developed a niche for translating the beauty of a field of flowers, a forest filled with trees, heathers with fog, plateaus in the Creuse valley, and the Dordogne river, onto a canvas.

He found success participating in various exhibitions, and after winning the gold medal in 1913 at the Universal Exposition, he was selected as a member of the Jury as well as a permanent senior member of the Societe des Artistes Francais.