CAMILLE LEROY (1905-1995)
Pic Laperrine or Pic Iharen (1, 732m - 5, 682ft)
Algeria
In Le pic Laperrine dans le massif du Hoggar en Algérie, watercolour, 1955
The mountain
Pic Laperrine or Iharen ((1, 732m - 5, 682ft), in the Hoggar (Algeria) is located a few kilometers northeast of Tammanrasset ; it is inhabited by Tuareg. The Laperrine peak is named after a French general ot he colonial era, François-Henry Laperrine d'Hautpoul who died of exhaustion not far away on March 5, 1920 after being forced to land his plane out of fuel.
The artist
Camille Leroy is a french painter who practiced, at the age of eleven, the miniature on wood and watercolor. He studied at the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris, then at the National School of Fine Arts from 1920 to 1927 where he was a pupil of Fernand Cormon (1845-1815) , François Flameng (1856-1923) and Lucien Simon (1861-1945).
He received the General Council Prize, the Artistic Grand Prize of the city of Algiers and the Gold Medal of the Society of Orientalist Painters.
He did his military service in Algeria in 1925. He received the Abd El Tif Prize in 1937 and then settled permanently in Algiers.
He was appointed professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Algiers in 1940.
Involved int he french "Resistance" against german occupation, he joined the Free French Forces and took part in the campaign in Tunisia, the Italian campaign, the landing in France and the Rhine and Danube countryside. He received the Croix de Guerre.
At the end of the war, he resumed his activities at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Algiers.
He left Algeria in 1970, approximatively the years after the declaration of Independence of Algeria c and moved to Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in France where he died.