38 Facts About Louis Dewis

Louis Dewis was the pseudonym of Belgian Post-Impressionist painter Louis DeWachter, who was an innovative and highly successful businessman.

Louis Dewis helped organize and managed the first department store chain.

Louis Dewis was born Isidore Louis DeWachter in Leuze, Belgium, the eldest son among the seven children of Isidore Louis DeWachter and Eloise Desmaret DeWachter.

The father went by Isidore, while the future Dewis was called Louis.

When Louis Dewis was 14, the family moved to Bordeaux, France, where Isidore established what would be the chain's flagship store.

Louis Dewis, who had begun his studies at the Athenee Royal Liege, continued lycee at Bordeaux.

Louis Dewis DeWachter married Bordeaux socialite Elisabeth Marie Florigni on 16 July 1896.

Louis Dewis was a Paris-based journalist on the staff of La Petite Gironde and, like his father, Robert Florigni was named Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.

Louis Dewis was a widowed army officer and a medical doctor who, after being discharged in the United States, had returned to France to continue his studies.

Louis Dewis was the namesake of his grandfather Jerome, the well-known Paris color merchant and art collector who loved to show his paintings to visitors at his shop on the rue Pigalle.

Louis Dewis assumed ultimate responsibility for 15 of the Maisons Dewachter.

Louis Dewis ran ads in newspapers; distributed illustrated catalogues; placed advertising on billboards and on trolleys; and published several series of promotional postal cards.

Louis Dewis had no choice but to borrow the sum from a very rich relation, something that humiliated him to his core.

Louis Dewis's few surviving early works were unsigned because his father refused to allow him to sully the family name by associating it with such a frivolous undertaking.

And, Yvonne recalled that the young Louis Dewis made "real artistic success" even more difficult to achieve.

Louis Dewis once served as the State Librarian at Brussels and had heroically engineered the rescue of truckloads of Belgian art treasures from what was almost certain destruction shortly after the Germans occupied Belgium in 1914.

From this period until his death in Biarritz in 1946, Louis Dewis's landscapes were shown regularly at major exhibitions across western Europe.

True, Louis Dewis had finally escaped the dictates of his overbearing father that had stymied his career for almost three decades.

Louis Dewis sold his majority interest in Dewachter freres and relocated his family from Bordeaux to Paris in May 1919.

In turning his career over to Petit, Louis Dewis had taken the biggest risk of his life and lost.

And, at this juncture of his life, Louis Dewis was to encounter another antagonist.

Louis Dewis resented his talented and more famous beau-pere.

Louis Dewis was perfectly content painting what he wanted to paint.

Louis Dewis exhibited throughout France and Belgium in the 1920s and 30s, as well as in Germany, Switzerland and what were at the time the French colonies of Algeria and Tunisia.

Louis Dewis was prolific, selling hundreds of paintings in his career.

Louis Dewis gained international attention for publicly urging the French government to treat Belgians with less suspicion and more compassion.

Louis Dewis was named an Officier d'Academie in 1912, when he was still painting as an amateur, and he was named Officier de l'Instruction Publique in 1922, three years after relocating to Paris.

Louis Dewis was a Laureat of the Societe des Artistes Francais, an associate member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a founding member of the Salon des Tuileries and of the Societe des peintres du Paris moderne and of the Societe royale des beaux-arts of Belgium, among others.

Louis Dewis was inspired by the countryside of the Pays Basque.

Since travel was greatly limited during the occupation, Louis Dewis often found his subjects within his own garden, in nearby parks and along the Atlantic coast.

Louis Dewis died of cancer at Villa Pat in late 1946.

Louis Dewis was buried in the family tomb at Bordeaux's Cimetiere de la Chartreuse.

Louis Dewis's devoted daughter Andree had returned to live in her Paris co-propriete after the war ended.

Louis Dewis carefully crated up the entire contents of his atelier at Villa Pat.

The effort culminated in the exhibition Louis Dewis Rediscovered at the Courthouse Galleries in Portsmouth, Virginia in 1998.

The Belgian ambassador to the United States, Alex Reyn, was an honored guest at Louis Dewis Rediscovered, after which he requested that three Louis Dewis paintings be lent for permanent exhibition in his country's embassy in Washington, DC.

Since their rediscovery in 1996, more than 100 of Louis Dewis's paintings found in his daughter's attic have been cleaned and framed and are lent to museums for the public to enjoy.

OMA staged a mini-exhibition of Louis Dewis works beginning in May 2018 and a full exhibit of more than 100 Louis Dewis paintings in January 2019.