| The artistic year opens in Paris with the interesting exhibition of his latest works by our compatriot, Mr. Pierre Girieud, at the Galerie Druet.
The work of M. Girieud is all about austere probity. Nothing is left to chance of a happy improvisation. Everything appears thoughtful and meditated. None of those brilliant trompe-l'oeils used by busy or inept painters. On modern thoughts making ancient verses, Mr. Pierre Girieud brings to his craft the patient faith of a primitive.
Apart from a few savory interpretations of Tintoretto and Rubens, it is from southeastern France that Mr. Girieud borrowed the themes of all his landscapes. One would think that this artist, who nevertheless made numerous and long stays in Paris, where he had many friends, was wary of the vaparous seductions of the Ile de France and preferred the gray austerity of the lands where vines and trees grew. 'Olivier. Saint-Rémy, Orgon, Eguières, Moustiers, Riez provided him in turn with subjects. Mr. Girieud does not like to move away from the regions that the ancient world fertilized. After having celebrated the grandiose architecture of the kings, he felt the need to erect a fragment of colonnade or to proclaim the beauty of the antiques dear to the heart of every cultivated man.
Enamored of classicism, he frequently places in his landscapes, figures of naked or draped women, thus joining the tradition of Poussin, but the time is no longer when everyone is accustomed to ancient literature, any woman appearing "was immediately Ilie, it was the nymph Egeria" and these figures do not add much to his landscapes whose rough and severe order is sufficient in itself. To see appear, in front of a countryside whose depth has just collided with solid and impressive rocks, Lou Pastre with his dog and his sheep is as evocative, if not more, than to see in front of a landscape of the same kind, a circle of naked children or a woman draped in the attitude in which artists of old symbolized a spring or a river.
The noble tendencies of Mr. Pierre Girieud are those which mark in our time the desire of painters towards a new classical order. This order to impose itself has nothing to do with the external appearances of the past. He has only to seek out the spirit which once gave him his strength and his greatness and to take it as a framework in contemporary life. By denying all improvised seductions, by dismissing all happy accidents that chance might offer, Mr. Pierre Girieud has submitted to a discipline that is his strength. Does this mean that this discipline is equally beneficial for all others?
To say so is perhaps risky. The poet escapes from too rigid rules which he has not formed: painting also has its poets.
The fact remains that the example of Mr. Girieud is to be recommended to young painters who think that meditation and work are outdated things. Nothing remains, despite certain appearances, of what is not fertilized by work and meditation.
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