This café has a special feature: its walls are decorated with small watercolours by a Bellerin painter, Aimé-Félix Nicollerat (1876-1946).
Aimé-Félix Nicollerat (1876-1946) was certainly an admirer of the works of another painter of Bellerin origin, Louis-Auguste Veillon (1), for his style is strongly inspired by them. He trained in Paris and Rome, in the studio of a well-known watercolourist, Onorato Carlandi.
His views of Egypt brought him some success: the Queen of the Belgians and the Pasha of Egypt, Khedive Ibrahim Pasha Hassan, acquired an Egyptian painting by A.-F. Nicollerat. He had a particular talent for capturing the light of the desert, the reflections of the Nile, the sunsets on the horizon. Back in Switzerland, he painted views of the Alps, Lake Geneva and the Grisons, always in watercolour.
For more information:
Thierry Deladoey, Aimé-Félix Nicollerat. Peintre aquarelliste bellerin 1876-1946, Geneva, 2012.
1 See the note on the Domaine des Besses, Plan Bex, "Zigzags sur la colline de Chiètres".
