Honoré Louis UMBRICHT
 (Obernai, 1860 – Saint-Arnoult in Yvelines, 1943)

 Schlitters in the Vosges
 Oil on canvas
 Signed lower right
 55 x 65 cm

 The young Alsatian UMBRICHT began his painting studies with his uncle in Strasbourg. Very patriotic, he refused the subsidies that the German government (then occupying Alsace) offered him to join the School of Fine Arts in Munich, and preferred to come and settle in Paris.
 A student of BONNAT, H. LE ROUX and FEYEN-PERRIN, he entered the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1880 and made his debut the same year at the Salon with a portrait; his success grew rapidly, and he obtained a 3rd class medal in 1884 and again in 1898. He was a Sociétaire des Artistes Français from 1894. Participating in numerous exhibitions and Salons in France and abroad, he received several awards: 1st class medals in Chicago and London in 1888, honorable mention at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 and bronze medal at that of 1900, grand gold medal in Rouen in 1897, while in Brussels he received the Cross of the Order of Leopold.

 It is certainly his painting from the Salon of 1889, A Bad Path in the Vosges (exhibited under No. 2598), which constitutes the peak of his career, and best illustrates his naturalist painting with regionalist themes, which he practiced alongside his work as a portrait painter. The work was widely acclaimed by critics, who highlighted the artist's brilliant style (even if he is also considered hard-working and conscientious) and specified that the painting "imperiously commands attention". In this same vein of traditional scenes, we can cite Lumberjack in the Forest of Klingenthal (dated 1883 and kept at the Hôtel de Ville d'Ottrot) or The Clog Maker of Ottrot.

 Our painting belongs to this same register, dealing with a popular theme among local painting enthusiasts and artists, that of the schlitteurs. These Vosges lumberjacks descended, on sometimes very steep slopes, heavy loads of logs on "schlitts", a kind of wooden sled.
 The harshness of the work and nature of the Vosges shines through here in the vigorous and brushed touch that the author places in the execution of his painting. He knows how to give us here an overview of social realism as it was approached at the end of the century by a good number of artists, whether literary (E. ZOLA), sculptors (J. DALOU), or painters (J. ADLER).

 Acquired by the Pierre-Noël Museum in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges