Whenever I call in to Manchester Art Gallery (which is often) I have a wander around the Lowry and Valette room. I can’t calculate or even estimate therefore, how many times I have stood in front of work by arguably Manchester’s two most iconic artists. Both captured the City’s sulky, industrial heartland in their own style – although Valette taught Lowry at what was then Manchester Municipal School of Art. That was at the very start of the last century. Their iconography has therefore become entwined. 

 

Lowry was a Mancunian by birth, Valette was not. Born in Saint-Etienne, central France, he made the move to Bordeaux and attended night classes at the Ecole Municipale de Beaux-Arts et des Arts Decoratifs. Why Valette moved, in 1905, to live and work in sulky Manchester from Bordeaux is not known. But he worked at a printing company by day and continued his studies at the Municipal in the evenings. Within two years he was asked to teach there – and LS himself was inspired. 

 

But what intrigues me is that the printing firm – Norbury, Natzio & Co – was opposite Manchester Art Gallery on Princess Street. And a genuine ‘stone’s throw’ from Contemporary Six, where Valette’s decorative designs…so surprising, given the dark impressionist paintings in the gallery…will be on show from April 27th. A Valette triangle. What would the great painter have thought of his embedded, lasting presence in the City of his choice?

 

So how and why was this body of decorative work created? They represent his job, his way of earning a living in creating floral designs for print, whether for wallpaper, silk fabrics or upholstery, whilst studying. His earlier studies in Bordeaux equipped him with skill as a draughtsman and some of his ‘day job’ works have notes, coding and colour palette studies. At Norbury’s he was also creating print designs for export to the Far East. Although not signed or dated, history presumes that Valette began this work during his time in Manchester. When he moved back to France in 1928 his wife Andrée made a list of items to be shipped, which is available in Valette archives. There are several mentions of ‘cretonnes,’ the French name for these textile designs. Work which was obviously important to him. The motifs are very much representative of the style for rich interiors. Mostly flowers, sometimes birds and flowers, the intricate drawing employs a widely researched colour palette and some have East Asian qualities, perhaps reflecting his studies in Bordeaux where one of his teachers was the Japanese Consul. 

 

The drawings have remained in the same family for decades. A family of descendants of Mademoiselle Denavit, a friend of Vallette in the Beaujolais region where he had a house. The works subsequently became part of an English collection. 

 

And so I return to the thought: when Adolfe Valette was working just across the road, looking at Manchester Art Gallery, could he have ever thought, ever let himself imagine that a room there would be dedicated to him and his star pupil? Or could he have ever envisaged that his day job, earning a living to pursue his artistic convictions, would lead to a stunning and beautiful exhibition in a gallery, in a building that he would surely have walked past countless times, taking a lunchtime stroll along Princess Street and past the Town Hall into Albert Square. 

 

‘Pierre Adolphe Valette – Art Botanique,’ previews at Contemporary Six on April 27th and runs to May 18th. Visit and then pop across the road to Manchester Art Gallery to drink in the Valette contrast.