Short biography of Joseph Pigassou
Joseph Pigassou was born in Narbonne on August 14, 1878.
His father (Célestin Pigassou) novelties retailer in Narbonne was son to Célestin who from plowman became tripe batcher. His mother Lucie Rizoulières born in Gruissan is daughter to sea captain Baptiste Rizoulières. Joseph will keep a model of the ship which got lost during the inheritance process.
Joseph studied at the Seminary in Narbonne until he graduated with a literature and philosophy baccalaureate in 1896.
Joseph wanted to become a painter. His parents discouraged him and he went to study medicine in Toulouse.
His early works are mainly oil paintings, still life, landscapes, and views of Gruissan, with a fairly dull academic palette, quite realistic painting, and working on light. This concern will intensify as he became an aquarellist.
Gone for his internship in Tunis ‘hospital, he discovered photography on plates with gelatine bromide. He exercised his talents as a photographer particularly at the Dardanelles, in Salonika until the end of World War I.
Decorated with the Croix de Guerre for bravery in the Dardanelles war of trenches, and with the medal in Epidemics for his actions at the military hospital of Thessaloniki where he met the Felibrige major Paul Albarel. Demobilized, he marries Marguerite Augé in Mas-Grenier and settled as physician, stomatologist in Narbonne quai Victor Hugo.
He then abandoned photography for watercolour. Landscape painter, playing with colour to translate nuances or contrasts in light, he painted the villages of Tarn-et-Garonne and from about 1925, the Mediterranean coast in Saint-Raphaël, where he owned a villa, which inspired him. A few oil-paintings with a bright palette punctuated his production.
He kept in contact with his family in Gruissan, where he spent time with the Rizoulières, the Reverdy, the Bonnot, amongst them Louis. Joseph who thinked greatly of Lina Bill, acquired many of his paintings.
Befor WWII, the Family left Narbonne and Saint-Raphael for Mas-Grenier where Joseph retired with two passions. To paint as long as his sight will allow, and being latinist and hellenist, to translate Virgil's Eclogues in a unique and un orthodox way.
He died in Mas-Grenier in the fall of 1961.
Amateur painter by reason, he produced really a hundred paintings, work scattered among a wide family circle.