Maxime Dethomas

Maxime Pierre Dethomas (October 13, 1867 – January 21, 1929) was a painter, draughtsman, pastellist, lithographer, illustrator, and was "among the best known metteurs en scene and decorators" of theatres. As an artist, Dethomas was highly regarded by his contemporaries and exhibited widely, both within France and abroad. During the later part of his career, he is best remembered for his work overseeing set and costume design for the Théâtre National de l'Opéra and the Théâtre des Arts, Comédie-Française. The Musée d'Orsay (Paris), the Pushkin Museum (Moscow) and the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg) hold works by Dethomas, but the majority of his best work remain in the private collections of his descendants. A large collection of Dethomas's theatrically related work is held at the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra National de Paris. Dethomas is also remembered for his close friendship with the artists Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, his brother in-law Ignacio Zuloaga and his association with Les Nabis and other important Symbolist and Post Impressionist artists and writers. Dethomas died in 1929 and was buried at the Passy Cemetery in Paris.

Born in Garges-lès-Gonesse, Val-d'Oise, Maxime Dethomas came from a long line of painter-printers on one side of his family and of lawyers on the other. His father, Jean-Albert Dethomas (1842–1891), was an important Parisian politician. His step mother Louise Thierree (Jean-Albert married twice – Maxime was of the first marriage) belonged to the affluent middle-class of Bordeaux.

Dethomas enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs in 1887 at which he studied for a brief time, followed by a more varied course, from 1891 onwards, at the Académie de La Palette (104 Boulevard de Clichy in Montmartre) directed by Henri Gervex, Puvis de Chavannes and Eugène Carrière. Carrière's influence played a significant part in the early development of Dethomas's art, and he would go on to be a close friend of both the artist and his family. Dethomas passed much of his time at the bookshop of the Revue Indépendante run by Edouard Dujardin, and it was here that Dethomas first met Louis Anquetin and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Dethomas worked primarily as an artist from the early 1890s until his appointment in 1910 as the director of design at the Théâtre des Arts.

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