La Sieste

About Pierre Deval

Pierre Deval was the third child of a family of Lyon silk merchants living at 45 avenue Nouailles in Lyon. Known as the “Master of Orvès,” self-taught and working outside the Parisian commercial circuits, he spent a month in the studio of Fernand Cormon and was noticed by Léonce Bénédite at the Salon of 1921, where the French State acquired his Ariane.

He received the Abd-el-Tif prize in 1922 and exhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1924.

A friend of Albert Marquet and Jean Launois, he worked alongside them in Morocco. He owned the Domaine d'Orvès, whose park is today listed as a Jardin Remarquable.

Deval exhibited at the Salon d'Automne from 1920, at the Salon des Tuileries (1928 and 1929) and the Salon des Indépendants (1928), as well as at L'Art Français Indépendant (1929), the Salon d'Automne de Lyon (1919–1925) and the Salon du Sud-Est in Lyon from 1926. He also illustrated Jean Giraudoux's L'École des indifférents.