Pierre Adolphe Valette

Pierre Adolphe Valette (1876 – 1942) was a French Impressionist painter whose pupils included L. S. Lowry. His most acclaimed paintings are urban landscapes of Manchester.

Born in St Etienne in 1876, he trained in Paris, at the Birkbeck Institute, London, and in Japan.

In 1905 he began designing greetings cards and calendars for a Manchester printing company. He attended evening classes at Manchester Municipal School of Art and in 1907 he was invited to join the staff as a teacher. His French teaching style—sitting and painting with his students— was new to the United Kingdom. Lowry expressed great admiration for Valette, who taught him new techniques and showed him the potential of the urban landscape as a subject.

In 1920 he resigned from the Institute due to ill health. He stayed in Lancashire for a further eight years, teaching privately and painting in Manchester and Bolton. In 1928 he returned to Paris, where he died in 1942.

His paintings are distinctively Impressionist; a style that suited the damp fogginess of Manchester.