Georges Berger

Georges Berger was born in Normandy in 1908 and made his life in Montmartre, where he settled among the painters of the Butte and became a close friend of Gen Paul, the great Expressionist of the quarter. The two shared streets, cafés and models, and Gen Paul’s nervous, calligraphic manner — the picture drawn as much as painted, the colour breaking through a grey ground in sudden bursts — left its mark on Berger’s own.

Berger was above all a landscape painter of the city: the steps and windmills of Montmartre, the quays of the Seine with their bouquinistes, the markets and squares of Paris in rain and sun.

He also painted the port of Honfleur and the Norman coast of his childhood, still lifes and occasional portraits, always with the same hurried, expressive touch.

Berger exhibited in the Paris salons and galleries of the post-war years and died in 1976. His work, long collected in France, has found a growing international audience at auction alongside that of the Montmartre school.