Nicolas

Nicolas de Stael was born in St.Petersberg into the family of a Russian Lieutenant General, Baron Vladimir Stael von Holstein in 1914. In 1919, his family fled to Poland to escape the Russian Revolution. Nicolas studied at the Brussels Académie royale des beaux-arts and travelled Europe extensively during the 1930s. He lived in Paris in 1934, and in Morcco in 1936, It was in Paris that he first met his companion Jeannine Guillou, a fellow painter. Nicolas joined the Foreign Legion in 1939 and was demobilized in 1941. The war years proved difficult for Nicolas and Jeannine but Nicolas continued to paint and exhibit.They had their first child, Anne in 1942,their family already including Jeannine's first son Antoine who was nine. Nicolas became close friends with Georges Braque whom he met in Paris in 1944.By 1945, Nicolas' exhibitions' had brought him critical acclaim,yet fate dealt a cruel hand in the death of Jeannine the next year, the result of an illness brought on by malnutrition.Nicolas' reputation as a painter came to international attention during the late 40s and early 50s. John Berger declared in 1956 that De Stael was "the new hero of the art world.”Nicolas met Francoise Chapouton in the spring of 1946, and they married in May.However, by 1953,the painter's depression led him to seek isolation in the south of France (eventually in Antibes). He suffered from exhaustion, insomnia and depression. In the wake of a disappointing meeting with a disparaging art critic on March 16, 1955 he committed suicide. He leapt to his death from his eleventh story studio terrace, in Antibes. He was 41 years old.[12] [13].