A groundbreaking female painter who made history exactly one century ago is finally receiving the recognition she deserves. Odette Pauvert, who in 1925 became the first woman to win the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome in painting, is the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at La Piscine Museum in Roubaix, France, running until January 11, 2026.
Pauvert was only the third woman ever to receive the Grand Prix de Rome, following a sculptor and a composer, but she broke new ground as the first female painter to claim this honor. Despite this historic achievement, like many female artists of her era, this Parisian painter unjustly fell into the forgotten corners of art history. The last exhibition dedicated to her work was held at the Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers back in 1986.
The stunning Roubaix museum, housed in a former Art Deco swimming pool, has chosen to celebrate the centennial of Pauvert's distinction by bringing this overlooked artist back into the spotlight. The institution has made a deliberate effort to increase female representation in its collections, now featuring 12% female artists compared to approximately 7% nationally, according to museum director Hélène Duret.
Born in 1903 in Paris's Montparnasse district, known as an artists' quarter, Odette came from an artistic family. Her father, Henri Pauvert, worked as a copyist, animal painter, and portraitist, while her mother, Louise, created miniatures on ivory—a technique she passed on to both her daughters. These miniature works sold well and provided steady income for the family.
The exhibition opens with a series of compelling self-portraits that introduce visitors to the artist. With her dark, short, curly hair, Pauvert gazes at viewers with a serious expression. According to exhibition curator Adèle Taillefait, "She had a strong desire to assert her own image, a visibility strategy. Today, we'd say she had a sense of marketing." Taillefait notes that the artist developed a distinctive style that "doesn't belong to the avant-garde at all, but without being fully in classicism or Art Deco in the strict sense."
In 1922, Odette and her sister Marguerite successfully passed the entrance exam for the École des Beaux-Arts. Classes were not co-educational, and only workshop leader Ferdinand Humbert was authorized to welcome female artists. This gave her access to nude models for the first time, which hadn't been available in her parents' workshop or at the Paris City drawing school where she had received her initial training. "She very quickly acquired a highly advanced mastery of the nude," observes Taillefait.
It was precisely a nude painting, "The Legend of Saint-Ronan," that earned Pauvert the Grand Prix de Rome in 1925. This tall, highly expressive work, on loan from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, depicts a Breton hermit invoking the Lord on his knees, with two bulldogs lying at his feet. Significantly, the jury chose from anonymized works, unaware whether the painter was male or female, with no imposed subject—only the instruction to create a nude or draped figure.
The Rome Prize opened the doors of Villa Medici to Pauvert, where she resided for three and a half years. "She spoke of intoxication," recounts the curator. "In Italy, she daily encountered all the painting of the 14th and 15th centuries, which increasingly influenced her art." One canvas titled "Promotion 1926" shows Odette with her classmates: composer Louis Fourestier, sculptor Évariste Jonchère (with whom she would have an affair), and architect Alfred Audoul.
Pauvert rarely painted Parisian landscapes, instead finding inspiration in Brittany's Finistère region, where her parents built a seaside house in 1923. There she practiced working from nature, creating small landscapes, portraits, and ambitious monumental scenes that she submitted to the Salon. The region was viewed by painters of the era, notably Paul Gauguin, as primitive land where sacred eruptions were possible.
Many of these Breton works have been lost, but the exhibition presents one major painting, "Invocation to Our Lady of the Waters," which the artist herself donated to the Locronan Museum in 1934. Set in the Bay of the Dead, the work shows a group of women imploring the Virgin, protector of sailors, mixing naturalistic scenes with mystical apparition. Found in 2012 in severely damaged condition, it underwent extensive restoration.
During her Spanish period, beginning in 1934 when Pauvert became a resident of the French Academy in Madrid (inaugurated in 1929), she continued painting landscapes while intensely focusing on drawing. The exhibition features an exceptional gallery of portraits executed in charcoal or red chalk, including "The Shoe Shiner," "The Blind Man of Granada," and "Spanish Man with Hat." "These are faces deeply marked by life, simple workers she encountered in Castile and Andalusia," explains the curator. "She gives them remarkable nobility."
In 1937, Odette married André Tissier, an engineer and great art lover. They had three children in four years. "She became bourgeois," smiles Taillefait. "Her life was transformed, and this happy household became a new source of inspiration." Pauvert painted charming children but also women who seemed bored. As World War II approached, anxiety pervades certain paintings, such as "The Widow," showing her daughter Odile clinging to the arm of a grieving nanny.
According to the exhibition catalog published by Norma Editions, "The Widow" marked a "return to reality" after the "intoxication" of the Roman years and the ambitions they had fostered. Absorbed by family life, the painter returned to smaller formats, and her career experienced a marked slowdown. Her works were increasingly less exhibited in Salons, less commented upon, and she received practically no more commissions.
The exhibition concludes with her final painting, "The Young Shoot," a tender work depicting her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Odette Pauvert died prematurely in 1966 at age 62 from the effects of a stroke. The laudable goal of this retrospective is to restore her place within an art history that has too long made women invisible, offering a comprehensive look at an artist whose groundbreaking achievement deserves to be remembered and celebrated.
