Auguste Labouret . He was a French artist, restorer of old stained glass windows of many historical monuments, creator of stained glass windows with partitioned cement.
Biographical synthesis
He was born on March 20, 1871 in Laon, France . Former student of the Ecole Ne Superieure des Beaux-Arts.
Artistic career
He worked for fifty-five years as a master glassmaker and mosaicist. Member of the Salon d’Automne since its foundation and of the Society of Decorative Artists since 1912 , he has participated in all its events and in the exhibitions in Milan , Antwerp , Liège , Brussels , Rome , Philadelphia , New York , Buenos Aires , etc.
Out of competition at the International Exhibition of 1925 , class president 40 (windows) to 37, awarded the Central Society of Architecture (Sédille prize), first prize in the contest of light sources Barcelona, Labouret is president of the General Union of Glass and Glass of France, former president of the Chambre Syndicale des Maîtres Verriers; vice president of the jury at the Ecole des Métiers; Member of the jury at the National Labor Exhibition and the School of Applied Arts for Industry.
Restorer of old stained glass windows of many historical monuments, creator of stained glass windows in glass with partitioned cement, he has made as such a great Saint Christopher at the 1937 Exhibition and stained glass windows, for chapels among others in Poitiers and Canada, where he made sets of ceilings of glass for the Cathedral of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré , near Quebec City. He has executed many mosaics, in particular the floor of the Office du Tourisme in Paris, all the decoration of walls and lights, on glass slabs cut with the chisel of the Normandy dining room and according to this same process of high accessories for the church from Saint-Odile. Increase the constructive opacity of the cement. Stained glass windows of great expressive power and solidity of centuries.
Therefore, for mosaic, with a deep understanding of ancient techniques, he again used some neglected processes, such as, for floor coverings, the use of granite-marble with copper expansion joints , or even aluminum .
Knowing no more limits than his imagination, his untimely desire to invent, to take advantage of both the cellar and the attic, but also, when necessary, serious official rooms that he strives to achieve: a paradoxical enterprise, while retaining a total freedom in terms of themes and means of expression, orders and furniture that have, despite the absence of principles, an opportunity not to go out of style and last.
For these wall mosaics he sometimes used small marble elements , embedded in relief in the cement and then carved with the hammer, which, for such a large figure of Christ, provided a tactile and effective sensitivity to the material. Auguste Labouret’s work, numerous, diverse, full of technical inventions at the service of a tireless creative imagination continues, especially in Canada , where he is entrusted with the decoration of great religious buildings.
He retired to Kerveron and died there on February 13, 1964. A great artist very little known in his region!
