Roger Grillon
Bathers, Oil on Canvas, 1914
1914

Name: Bathers, Oil on Canvas, 1914
Brand: Roger Grillon
Price: 45000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Oil on canvas by Roger GRILLON (1881-1938), France, 1914. "Bathers". With frame: 114x94 cm - 44.9x37 inches ; without frame: 92x73cm - 36.2x28.75 inches. 30F format. Signed lower left "R. Grillon". Named and dated on the back of the frame "Baigneuses Mars-Juin 1914". Family provenance, Hôtel Drouot, June 26, 1967. Illustrated on the cover of the catalog. This major work by Roger Grillon is dated March-May 1914. It is very interesting in several aspects. The theme of bathers is represented in the modern period. The productions of Cézanne and Renoir are very well known. Those of Cézanne predate this one by about ten years, this one can be compared to the work of Maurice Denis from the same period. The work is distributed in two large horizontal planes separated by an intermediate plane. The lower foreground shows four naked young women seated or lying on a sheet protecting them from the grass. Three of them shield their faces from the sun's rays piercing the trees. Their bodies pinked by the sun show rounded shapes in the canons of the time. They are defined by black outlines that make them pop out of the canvas for a stark contrast with the natural surroundings. They occupy almost the entire surface of the canvas. The title of the work, Baigneuses (Bathers), is therefore unequivocal. The sheet on which these young women lie is white like the bodies and reflects the same shadows. It is also defined by dark circles which make it, with the young women, the whole foreign to the natural environment in which it is located. At the bottom of the composition, the grass on which this set rests is represented by expected colors. To complete this will of the painter, on the right, the hat carelessly placed on the grass, completes the known and conventional world of 1914. Like a kind of border, limit. These are the only reminders to the society of the time. The elongated body of the young woman at the bottom occupies the entire width of the composition. It marks the stability on which this homogeneous whole rests. Two trees on either side of this group provide protection. It brings out positive feelings such as gentleness, confidence, serenity and abandonment. The middle plane is represented by water of a deep blue, powerful, of impenetrable purity. A demarcation with the background plane. With the focus on the young women in the foreground, the background plane is depicted in a blurred form similar to a photographic process. The unknown. The danger ? But also the dream. Only the colors give indications of its nature. And what colors! Gorgeous greens and blue! For a magical and mysterious effect. This poetic and powerful painting offers a synthesis of the movements of the modern period which precedes it. It announces the neo-realist wave of the post-war period. Maurice Roger Grillon, born in Poitiers on September 28, 1881 and died in Maule on June 19, 1938, was a French painter, illustrator and wood engraver. He is the son of Albert-Fulgence Grillon, painter and lithographer in Poitiers. After a childhood spent in his father's lithography studio, in 1900 he came to follow the Beaux-Arts courses in Paris in Fernand Cormon's studio. There he became friend with Matisse and Marquet, and in 1904 began to send nudes and portraits to the Salon des Artistes Français, women in their boudoir, landscapes at dusk and still lifes dimmed in half-light, but he quickly gave up this salon, preferring to exhibit his work at the Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne. At the dawn of this century, Grillon felt the temptations of the Impressionism, and in a traditional, if not conventional, setting, placed the women à la Renoir, with vibrant flesh under the sun. Soon the impressionist liberties prevail, the blue shadows and the games of shimmering reflections gain his landscapes; he even confronted divisionism but did not abandon the down-to-earth realism that dominates his work, and from which he draws the deepest roots in southern nature. In 1926, the Parisian gallery Berthe Weill devoted a personal exhibition to him. He successively settled to paint near Albi, in Collioure, in Saint-Paul de Vence, then in Roussillon in Prades and in the Corbières, in Lagrasse, which became his chosen land. It illustrates with woodcuts or etchings works by Paul Morand, Montherlant, Mauriac, Delteil. From 1939, Raymond Escholier organized a retrospective of his work at the Petit Palais in Paris (February-March 1939), presenting paintings, drawings, but also engravings. Indeed, Roger Grillon illustrated several works, such as Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare (1921, woodcut), The Child who took fear by Auguste Gilbert de Voisins (1926, etchings) or Perpignan by Joseph Delteil (1927 , etchings). In 1940, Paris, André gallery, rue des Saint-Pères (with Jean Dufy, Lucien Génin, Marcel Dyf, Wilder, Zingg, Zendel). In 1952, Marc Sandoz presented an important retrospective around Roger Grillon, bringing together eighty works (paintings, watercolours, drawings, illustrations). In October 1981 the Martin-Caille gallery (Paris) devotes a retrospective to him and an album in which the paintings of Lagrasse are the most numerous. In 1988 the Paul Gauguin Center in Pont-Aven devoted an exhibition to him. The museums of Algiers, Angers, Albi, Carcassonne, Céret, Fontenay-le-Comte, La Rochelle, Grenoble, Troyes, the Georges Pompidou National Museum of Modern Art and the Luxembourg Museum hold works by Roger Grillon.

Creator:

Roger Grillon (1881 - 1938, French)

Creation Year:

1914

Dimensions:

Height: 37.01 in (94 cm)Width: 44.89 in (114 cm)Depth: 1.97 in (5 cm)

Medium:

Canvas,Oil

Movement & Style:

Impressionist

Period:

1910-1919