Lewis Trege was born Louis Andre Tregre on September 4, 1902 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, also named Louis Andre Tregre, was born in 1861 in New Orleans. His mother, Aimee Landry Tregre, was born in 1863 in New Orleans. The parents married in 1891 and had two children, Laura Mary Tregre (b.1892), and Louis Andre Tregre (b.1902). The father was an engineer.
By 1908 the mother had died, and the father had passed his two children onto his widowed sister, Laura Allain, a widow aged sixty-one.
The 1910 U.S. Census listed the two children in New Orleans as the niece and nephew of Laura Allain age sixty-three.
In 1918, during The Great War, Louis Tregre was still a school student, age sixteen, so he did not serve in the military.
The 1920 U.S. Census listed Louis Tregre as a "clerk" at a machine shop. His home residence was 4838 Chestnut Street, where he lived with his older sister, Laura, who worked as a dressmaker, and their paternal aunt, Laura Allain, age seventy-two.
On August 31, 1923 his sister, Laura Mary Tregre, married Roy Gordon MacPherson, who had been born in New York and worked in New Orleans as a clerk.
In 1924 Louis Tregre studied at an art school in New Orleans. The typical training process is three years.
In 1927 the New Orleans Telephone Directory listed Louis Tregre at 4027 Banks Street, and his occupation was a clerk at the Gulf Oil Company.
By 1929 Louis Tregre had left New Orleans and moved to New York City, where he worked as a clerk at the Gulf Oil Company, located at 17 Battery Place in lower Manhattan, with offices overlooking the harbor. At that same time he began to study night classes at the Grand Central School of Art.
On December 3, 1929 Louis Tregre married Mary V. Sullivan in NYC. She was born in 1907 in upstate New York. She worked in NYC as a telephone operator instructor. The married couple moved to an apartment at 520 West 174th Street in the Washington Heights area of Upper Manhattan.
On August 26, 1930 their daughter Jeanne Marylin Tregre was born in NYC.
On November 9, 1937 the artist's father, Louis Andre Tregre died at the age of seventy-five in New Orleans.
In 1938 the artist began to paint landscape murals for the displays at the Locomotive Building for the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Queens, NYC.
The 1940 U.S. Census listed the Tregre family at 16 Broadway Terrace, which is near 193rd Street and Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan. His occupation as "freelance commercial artist." His wife was listed as a "telephone operator instructor."
In 1941 the artist was hired as a staff artist at the William H. Jackson Company, manufacturer and importer of mantels and fireplaces fixtures, located at 32 East 57th Street. With a steady salary the family could afford to move to a more spacious apartment at 704 West 180th Street.
On February 15, 1942, during World War II, Louis Tregre reported for draft registration, at which time he was listed as age thirty-nine, with brown hair, brown eyes and a light complexion. Since he was married and the father of a young daughter, he was not selected for military service.
During the war-years, Louis Tregre sold, under the pen name "Lewis Trege," several pulp cover illustrations to Private Detective, Super Detective, and Speed Detective, all of which were published by Trojan Publishing, where Adolphe Barreaux was the art director.
In 1948 the artist exhibited at the Hall of Art In NYC.
In 1947 Louis Tregre taught art classes at the Murray School of Art in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.
In 1949 the artist and his family moved to Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, where he owned and operated the Studio Art Shop on Main Street in the village.
In 1950 the Art Association in the Civic Center of Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, welcomed the new local artist "Lewis Trege" to join their annual exhibition. where his painting of his daughter "Portrait Of Jeanne" won the second place prize.
On October 23, 1950 The Bergen Evening Record (New Jersey) published an article "Tregre's Paintings Shown By Ridgefield Park Library."
On July 15, 1959 Mr. & Mrs. Tregre took a two week Caribbean vacation on the "Queen of Bermuda."
In 1961 the artist's daughter, Jeanne Marylin Tregre began to work for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in NYC. After eight years she became associate media director at the Clinton E. Frank Agency. She lived with her parents at 210 East 15th Street in the neighborhood of Stuyvesant Park, where she became a active community preservationist.
In the 1970s the Tregre family bought a country home at 27 Russells Path in Brewster, Massachusetts.
On July 1, 1983 Louis A. Tregre died at the age of eighty in Brewster, MA.
© David Saunders 2021 |
