Georgette AGUTTE (1862 -1922) - Seine in Bonnières

Georgette Agutte was born in Paris on May 17, 1867 and died in Chamonix on September 4, 1922.

She came from a wealthy bourgeois family with an interest in art. She began studying sculpture with Louis Schroeder. She studied with Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, as did Matisse and Rouault.
After her divorce in 1894, she married Marcel Sembat, a distinguished scholar who became a socialist deputy and minister in 1916.
Agutte was very active as an artist and promoter of art during her lifetime, exhibiting her work at the Salon des Indépendants from 1904.

She helped found the Salon d'Automne, where she exhibited regularly and was later named an honorary member.

Her painting is Fauvist, with a vivid, controlled and strong palette. She painted a large number of portraits of contemporary figures, including Gustave Kahn, exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1920.

She also painted landscapes, notably mountain scenes, and flowers. She was the first artist to use fiber cement sheets as a support for her paintings.

She devoted much of her life to contemporary art, and the Sembat house became an important meeting place for modern artists. In 1910, she took part in the Brussels Exhibition, exhibiting ten panels of views of Marcel Sembat's garden in Bonnières.