Lucien Adolphe Labaudt (May 14, 1880 – December 12, 1943) was a French-born American painter based in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for "Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. His best-known work may be ''Powell Street'' (1934), a mural in fresco at

Coit Tower Coit Tower is a tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, offering panoramic views over the city and the bay. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built between 1932 and 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's b ...

that he created for the

Public Works of Art Project The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was a New Deal program designed to employ artists that operated from 1933 to 1934. The program was headed by Edward Bruce, under the United States Treasury Department with funding from the Civil Works Admi ...

Biography

Labaudt was born in Paris on May 14, 1880. In 1906, he emigrated to the United States and first settled in

Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

. In 1910, he moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in a studio. In 1919, Labaudt started teaching at the California School of Fine Arts. One of his students was painter

Nell Sinton Eleanor "Nell" Walter Sinton (née Eleanor Walter; 1910–1997) was an American artist, an art community leader, and educator. She was a distinguished San Francisco Bay Area abstract painter and collagist. Sinton served on the San Francisco Arts ...

. He painted two murals in the lobby of the Spring Street Courthouse in Los Angeles: ''Life on the Old Spanish and American Ranchos'' in 1938 and ''Aerodynamism'' in 1941. Labaudt was one of a select number of civilian artists invited to join the

United States Army Art Program The United States Army Art Program or U.S. Army Combat Art Program is a U.S. Army program to create artwork documenting its involvements in war and peacetime engagements. The art collection associated with the program is held by the U.S. Army Cen ...

in World War II. He was appointed to the program in April 1943, and assigned to the

China Burma India Theater China Burma India Theater (CBI) was the United States military designation during World War II for the China and Southeast Asian or India–Burma (IBT) theaters. Operational command of Allied forces (including U.S. forces) in the CBI was off ...

. When the Army's War Art Unit was abruptly eliminated by Congress, he joined the war art program of ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...

'' magazine. He left Los Angeles for India in September 1943, traveling for two months aboard a

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a ship class, class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost constr ...

carrying a cargo of dynamite. He was killed in a plane crash in

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

on December 12, 1943, en route to China, where he had been assigned to capture scenes of

guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run ...

. Labaudt was the first war correspondent killed in that theatre and the only ''Life'' artist-correspondent to die in the war. None of his sketches or personal effects survived.

Legacy

named the SS ''Lucien Labaudt'' was christened at Richmond Shipyards on April 7, 1944. In 1946, Labaudt's widow Marcelle opened the Lucien Labaudt Art Gallery at 1407 Gough Street in San Francisco. His work can be seen at the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

References

External links

Lucien Labaudt
at

The Living New Deal The Living New Deal is a research project and online public archive documenting the scope and impact of the New Deal on American lives and the national landscape. The project focuses on public works programs, which put millions of unemployed to wo ...

*Lucien Labaudt , http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/cara/ucb/text/Cara_Volume_19.pdf *Lucien Labaudt ''L'Atelier'', oil on canvas ,1931, in the OMCA collections , http://collections.museumca.org/?q=collection-item/a8221 *Lucien Labaudt ''Couch'', mahogany furniture, 1930, in the OMCA collections , http://collections.museumca.org/?q=collection-item/a8721 1880 births 1943 deaths American male painters Artists from San Francisco French emigrants to the United States French male painters 19th-century American painters 19th-century French painters 20th-century American painters 20th-century French painters 19th-century French male artists 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists Public Works of Art Project artists Federal Art Project artists Section of Painting and Sculpture artists World War II artists {{US-painter-1880s-stub