André Devambez

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  Place Pigalle
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  La Charge (1902–1903), Musée d'Orsay
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  "The Palace of Chaillot during the 1937 International Exposition, see from the Eiffel Tower (1937)
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  Concert by the Colonne Symphony Orchestra

Paris and the Parisians were the subjects most often painted by Devambez, and he often depicted them from an unusual perspective, from above. In his youth he lived in the sixth floor of a building at the corner of boulevard Montmartre and rue Vivienne, and saw the activity and crowds in the Paris streets spread out below him. This was translated into a series of paintings.

There are nine of his works in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, including his best-known painting, La Charge. This dramatic scene, painted in about 1902, is an aerial view of a violent nighttime confrontation as the Paris police broke up a demonstration of labor union workers on strike on the Boulevard Montmartre. Ironically, though Devambez was a sympathiser of the strikers, the painting ended up hanging in the office of the Prefect of Police, Chiappe, who had ordered the repression of the strike.[10]

In 1937 he received a commission from the Paris International Exposition to paint an aerial view of the new Palace of Chaillot at the Exposition, made from the second level of the Eiffel Tower. It showing the immense crowd at the Exposition on both sides of the Seine and on the bridge between. The painting also made abundant use of the color blue, which was the official color of the Exposition. It now hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Rennes.[11]

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  A whimsical "Dirigible-Bus" over Paris (1909)
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  "The only bird which flies above the clouds" (1910), Musée d'Orsay
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  Fantastic aircraft (1911-1914)

As an artist Devambez was attracted to scenes of modern life and modern technology, particularly aviation. In 1909, he made a colour lithograph of a "Dirigible-Bus", a whimsical imaginary vehicle that combined the features of Paris municipal bus and a balloon. Between 1909 and 1010, he frequented air shows in Paris and other cities, and illustrated the aircraft, sometimes painting them as they would be seen seen from high above. These illustrations appeared in the popular magazine "L'Illustration", and there publications, while a group was presented at the Paris Salon.

In 1910, he was invited to provide twelve decorative panels for the new French Embassy in Vienna,[7] He chose the subject of modern inventions, painting the metro, an omnibus, airships, the Paris Metro, ships and aeroplanes. He completed designs for the twelve panels, but due to a financial scandal in another part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the project was left unfinished, and the paintings were not installed. . In 1934 André Devambez was appointed the first official artist to the newly created French Air Ministry. The smaller panels he made survived in the archives of the Ministry. They were finally put into place at the Vienna Embassy in a newly-designed gallery in 1993.[12]

One painting of the series is on display in the Musée d’Orsay. Entitled Le seul oiseau qui vole au-dessus des nuages ("The only bird that flies above the clouds"), it employs a breathtaking downward perspective to show a biplane flying above a cloud-mass, with glimpses of the ground far below, and the shadow of the aircraft on the clouds.

In addition to painting aircraft, Devambez created illustrations of the new Paris Metro, showing the crowds gathered on the quays, and whimsical cartoons of the earliest automobile shows and races, including the Paris-Berlin automobile race that took place in July 1901.

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  Etching of Front Lines in the First World War (1917)
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  Etching of front lines in the First World War (1917)(Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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  Front Lines in the First World War (1917)
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  Residents of French town lining up for coal (1917)

When the First World War began in 1914, Devambez was forty-seven years old, too old to be drafted. Nonetheless he volunteered for service as a combat artist and to paint camoulflage, and made serveral trips to the front. On June 3, 1915, he was badly injured by an exploding German shell. His first paintings of the war were based on photographs, and were rather formal. In 1917. he published an album of twelve etchings boded on his experience at the front, which were more dramatic and intimate. The subjects included "Cold", "Shell Holes"; "The fire" "The rain"; "The spy"; "Storms"; "The hostages"; "The reserves"; "Coal"; "The madman" "The Fire:; "Coal" and "Shrapnel". which were his personal views of the war. these were published in an edition of 150 copies in 1915. He often depicted the scenes as viewed from high above.[13]

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  "The misunderstanding" (1903-1904)
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  "Reading", his daughter Valentine and son Pierre (1914)
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  His children, Valentine and Pierre (1925)

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  Lithograph of toys at Galeries Lafayette department store (1907)
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  "Waiting for the Metro" (1910) (Lithograph enhanced with Guache and water colors)
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  "Premiere at the Montmartre Theater (1901) (Colored Lithograph)

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  "The Fete of the Fairies" (1922)
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  "Ulysses and Calypso" (1936)

The "Tout-Petits" are a genre of very small paintings made by Devambez, which usually illustrated an anecdote or joke. They were generally only a few dozen centimetres in size, and sometimes were set in very elaborate frames, and became a kind of display object, between a sculpture and a painting.

In 1936, during the Great Depression, he faced some financial difficulties, and reverted to his earlier style to produce a large and highly decorative work, full of symbolism and color, on the Classical Greek theme of Ulysses and Calypso. It was purchased by the Museum of the Petit Palais.[14]

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  Engraving from "Gullver's Travels" (1911) in "Illustration"
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  "Gulliver Steals the Fleet of the Big-Enders", Illustration from "Gulliver's Travels" (1921)
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  Image from "Gulliver's Travels" in "Illustration" (1911)

André Devambez provided illustrations for books and magazines. Auguste a Mauvais Caractère (Devambez, 1913) was a children's book, with André's own illustrations hand-coloured by the master of stencil technique, Jean Saudé; the original illustrations were exhibited the following year at the Palais de Glace. This was the first of a number of children's books, including Histoire de la petite Tata et du Gros Patapouf and Les Aventures du Capitaine Mille-Sabords, nos. 8 and 9 in a series of undated stories issued in concertina format "Chez l’auteur". These children's stories were probably intended for the amusement of his son, Pierre Devambez (1902–1980) and his daughter Valentine (1907-?). His son became an archeologist and later became curator of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Louvre,

Books illustrated by André Devambez include La Fête à Coqueville by Émile Zola (Éditions Fasquelle, 1899);[7] Le Poilu a Gagné la Guerre by Charles Le Goffic (1919); and Les Condamnés à Mort by Claude Farrère (Édouard-Joseph & L’Illustration, 1920). He also contributed illustrations to Le Figaro Illustré, Le Rire, and L'Illustration.

A retrospective of his work was held at the Musée de Beauvais in 1988. A large exposition of his paintings and illustrations was held at the museum of art of the City of Paris at the Petit Palais in 2022.