Louis Vivin (1861 – 1936) was born in Hadol, France. He showed great enthusiasm for painting as a child, but his career took him in a completely different direction: he worked as a postal clerk until 1922, pursuing his art only in his spare time. Once he retired in 1923, Vivin finally took up the full- time part of being an artist. He was discovered by the German art critic Wilhelm Uhde and his first one-man exhibition was placed at the Galerie des Quatre Chemins in Paris in 1927. Vivin was a contemporary of Henri Rousseau, Camille Bombois, André Bauchant, and Séraphine Louis, known collectively as the “Sacred Heart Painters” and as masters of French naïve painting. His later work was considered to become less dependent of the melancholy mood, and it focused more on blocks of color and form.
