Robert Pougheon

Pougheon was born in Paris on 18 July 1886. He studied first at the Academie Julian in Paris, then entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1912 under Jean-Paul Laurens and Albert Besnard, and also trained at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs under Charles Lameire. In 1914 he won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in painting. He exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes Francais from 1911, receiving a mention honorable in 1913, a silver medal in 1927, and a gold medal in 1929.

Beyond easel painting, Pougheon produced murals, frescoes, and decorative schemes, illustrated books, and designed artwork used on French banknotes. In 1942 he was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici. He later served as curator of the Musee Jacquemart-Andre in Paris from around 1946 until his death, a role confirmed by Wikipedia, the Villa Medici's institutional biography, and an auction house biography (Leland Little Auctions).

Pougheon died in March 1955. Sources disagree on the exact day: Wikipedia gives 1 March 1955, while the French Academy in Rome's own biographical note and the INHA Agorha authority file both give 8 March 1955. No primary obituary has been located to resolve the discrepancy, and the place of death is not confirmed in the sources reviewed here, so both the day and the location should be treated as unresolved.

Contemporary critical writing on Pougheon specifically is thin in the record reviewed for this profile; no exact, attributable critic quotes from major outlets could be verified. His standing rests chiefly on institutional and Salon recognition during his lifetime, the Prix de Rome, Salon medals, and the Villa Medici directorship, and on his frequent grouping with Jean Dupas, Rene Buthaud, and Jean Gabriel Domergue as part of the Art Deco milieu sometimes labeled the Bordeaux School. That grouping is a useful frame for placing his mythological, classically posed figures within period taste, though it describes a loose stylistic affinity rather than a formal school with fixed membership.

Pougheon's market runs almost entirely through auction rather than gallery representation. Recent activity includes Les Dioscures, offered at Sotheby's New York on 5 February 2026 with an estimate of USD 60,000 to 80,000; the realized price was not disclosed in public sources. Market reference sites cite Amazones, sold at Christie's, as a benchmark result for the artist, but the sale price, currency, and exact date are not visible without a paid database subscription. No single, verifiable all-time auction record, work, price, currency, house, and date together, could be confirmed from the sources available for this profile. Public auction listings otherwise show his paintings and drawings selling in a modest range, generally in the low thousands, through houses including Sotheby's, Christie's, Heritage Auctions, and Roseberys, and on platforms including Artsy, Artnet, MutualArt, Invaluable, and Artprice.

No current gallery or estate representation could be identified for Pougheon as of 2026-07-10; his market is a secondary one, conducted through major auction houses and online marketplaces rather than a dealer network. No catalogue raisonne exists, so provenance and saleroom cataloguing, rather than a certifying body, are the practical means of authentication. Auction supply is limited and prices are generally modest, so collectors should read any single result, including recent estimates such as the one for Les Dioscures, in the context of a thin, illiquid market rather than as evidence of a stable price trend.