Pastels by Félix Michel (1)

The 19th century painter Charles-Henri Michel, grandfather of my friend Charles-Henry who passed away two weeks ago at the age of 99, was not the only artiste-peintre in the Michel family. The painter Charles-Henri had three sons: Auguste, Félix, et Paul, all born between 1855 and 1860. One of them, Félix, was a painter who worked with pastels. That's about all I know about him, except that I read somewhere that he lived most of his life in Rouen (Normandy), a city where I spent a year teaching... 50 years ago. C-H's father Paul was a well-known doctor who practiced in Paris and died in 1956.

These pastels came to me from Charles-Henry who recently died via another friend of his whose name is Jim. Jim became a colleague and friend of Charles-Henry's some 50 years ago. I have never actually met him, but Jim and I have been keeping each informed on Charles-Henry's health for a few years now. Charles-Henry talked of Jim often and fondly over the decades I knew him. At some point he gave Jim digitized copies of these pastels that C-H's uncle Félix painted, I assume, in the 19th century. I first saw them decades ago, I didn't have a copy of them until Jim e-mailed them to me last week. He asked me to post them here.

PS: I just found this web page about Félix Michel, who died in 1915. It was written by our departed friend Charles-Henry!