Albert Cheuret

Albert Cheuret was born in 1884 in Paris. He studied sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jacques Perrin, a professor at the school, and under Georges Lemaire, though no source documents a specific degree or exact years of study. He began his professional activity around 1907 and exhibited regularly thereafter at the Salon des Artistes Francais.

He served as an officer in the 1st engineering corps during the First World War and was wounded twice. In 1920 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur for his military service. He resumed his practice after the war, taking a Paris studio near the Champ de Mars in 1921, and worked primarily in patinated bronze and alabaster, producing lamps, clocks, mirrors, small sculptures, and furniture, frequently drawing on animal and wildlife motifs.

His signature moment came at the 1925 Exposition internationale des Arts decoratifs et industriels modernes, where he rented a stand, number 33, on the Pont Alexandre III and showed his light fixtures alongside clocks and figural bronzes to strong commercial success. He also received public commissions, including commemorative structures at the Cimetiere du Montparnasse and the Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise in Paris, and the war memorial in Cannes. Albert Cheuret died in 1966 in Paris. The exact day and month of his birth and death are not documented in any source consulted for this profile. His granddaughter, Catherine Bernard, is known to hold family archives and objects.

Cheuret's contemporaries recognized him early, awarding his ornamental sculpture the top prize in the 1908 competition organized by the Reunion des fabricants de bronze, and the state later honored his wartime service with the Legion d'Honneur in 1920. His reputation today rests less on published criticism than on sustained institutional and dealer interest: a work attributed to him is documented in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and a bronze and alabaster clock from around 1929 has been on view in the Lewis Art Deco Galleries at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Specialist Art Deco galleries continue to treat him as a significant, if second-tier, figure of the period, prized specifically for his lighting and animal-form bronzes.

Cheuret's auction market is concentrated in lighting: sconces, chandeliers, and ceiling fixtures in patinated bronze and alabaster. Artprice records 517 auction appearances for the artist, mostly in the lighting category, and ranks him 1,169th among the top 5,000 best-selling artists at auction by 2025 turnover. Public databases do not agree on a single, fully documented all-time high. MutualArt's summary figure puts his highest recorded price at roughly USD 68,600 for a lighting work, though the exact title, auction house, and sale date are not specified in that source. Phillips has sold a ceiling light for USD 9,525 through an online design sale, though the exact sale date is not shown on the public lot page. Because more complete pricing sits behind subscription databases, this profile does not assert a single confirmed auction record; any headline figure should be checked against a primary auction catalogue before being treated as definitive. His work is handled on the secondary market principally by Galerie Marcilhac in Paris and Maison Gerard in New York, alongside several other Paris decorative arts dealers.

There is no catalogue raisonne and no estate authentication board for Albert Cheuret, so provenance and expertise from specialist dealers such as Galerie Marcilhac and Maison Gerard carry unusual weight in verifying a work. His market is thin and concentrated in lighting, and public sources do not agree on a single confirmed record price, with figures cited across platforms ranging from roughly USD 9,500 to about USD 68,600; collectors should verify any headline price against a primary auction catalogue rather than relying on a single database summary. Collectors should also note that basic biographical facts, including the exact dates of his birth and death, remain undocumented beyond the years 1884 and 1966, which is typical for a decorative artist of his era whose reputation rests more on objects than on archival paper trail.