Élisabeth Sonrel’s Art Noveau and Pre-Raphaelite Paintings of Angelic Women

Élisabeth Sonrel (1874 – 1953) was a French painter and illustrator in the Art Nouveau style. Her works included allegorical subjects, mysticism and symbolism, portraits and landscapes. From Renoir Fine Art Inc: Elizabeth Sonrel was the daughter of the painter from Tours, Stephane Sonrel, from whom she received her early artistic guidance. To further her artistic studies she moved on to Paris where she became the pupil of the famous artist Jules Lefebvre at his Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The Tours museum owns her diploma work, Pax et Labor, which was executed in 1892 at the age of 18 and shows how tremendously precocious she was. She showed at the Salon des Artistes français in Paris from 1893 to 1941, especially large watercolors of idealized women that have both a certain Pre-Raphaelite intensity (since a journey in Italy, to Florence and Rome where she discovered the Renaissance painters, she deeply admired Botticelli) and an affinity to French symbolist painting. She was inspired by Arthurian romance, biblical subjects, archaic legends and medieval love. André Rieu - Memory