| Chance, which takes pleasure in instructive contrasts, has just brought out, side by side, at the same time, the particular exhibition of two painters, each representing one of the trends that, by Jeu puéril, we like to periodically oppose one to the other. 'other.
One, Mr. Georges d'Espagnat, serves casual flair, the other Mr. Girieud submits to thoughtful rules the great impulses towards which he marks an instinctive mistrust.
The first is placed after the Impressionists, happy to see the light diffuse the colors and vibrate the booming shades (....) The second can be among the manufacturers concerned with enclosing, with precision, the various forms, mark the architecture of a building or a hill, using a voluntary drawing. One is of romantic tendencies and will ask the Persian poets the subject of a painting; the other inclines towards classicism and delights in the austere task of reproducing, line for line, a portrait of Cranach, of interpreting Le Tintoret and of drawing, according to Rubens, two admirable nude figures which appear, on the whole that he brought together, attractive and magnificent. Let us not ask ourselves what research is the best and which should prevail. (....)
Oppose this page to the Portrait of Fernand Mazade, by M. Girieud 1 Here, more wrap, more caress. but a harsh analysis which follows all the contours, marks all the wrinkles that life has traced. Girieud reminds us that the analytical spirit is not unique to Rhenish artists and that Provence. she too knows how to subject her sons to this discipline. Disciplined. this word quickly comes to mind when we want to explain the art of Mr. Girieud (....)
Fleeing the vaporous light of the Ile de France that is too favorable for daydreaming, the mists in which Corot saw the appearance of romantic nymphs with imprecise outlines, he asked for his models from Provence, a land of humanism The King of the Alpilles, the mountains which surround Moustiers made him disdain the forest of Fontainebleau and the banks of the Seine. He looked for the harsh corners where the olive tree climbs the hillsides and where the last vines put their twisted vines There, if the memory of the Parisian sweets that he celebrated and to which he sometimes returns, If this memory calls him in apostasy, he has, very close, the antiques of Saint-Remy and the columns of Riez which remind him of his truth.
(...) Pierre Girieud, fond of classicism. is haunted by the memory of the Chick and it is a weakness for one. artist than letting his mind wander to too distant shores. As well, one could say that most of the naked groups that Mr. Girieud places, like the master of the Andelys, among his landscapes, these groups appear almost useless, do not add anything to his paintings, if this is sometimes not a colored agreement which a rock or a tree would provide in the same way. Because Mr. Girieud cannot escape from his time. Instinctively, he realizes that if, in the seventeenth century the landscape existed, in the eyes of painters, only as a framework for an action or for a character, in our time, for the hearts of contemporaries, it is enough to only him
We no longer live enough with the ancient gods so that a group of naked women, emerging among the realistic lines of a site reproduced with exactitude, if they are not bathers near a calm water, does not excite any d first of all, no surprise. Whether Mr. Girieud shows us in the Lou Pastre campaign with his dog and sheep or two draped figures passing near the remains of a colonnade, nothing better, but the juxtaposition, on the threshold of a landscape, borrowed with precision from a determined nature, of two naked groups separated by a round of equally naked children, simply gives the idea of ??three or four tables united in one. An anachronism without deep reason, here, takes place unnecessarily. This repeating fantasy ceases to be a fantasy and joins the convention, annoying in all its frozen formulas.
Discipline and will, it is by this that Mr. Pierre Girieud is closer to the spirit of the youngest painters than Mr. Georges d'Espagnat.
The rules that Mr. Girieud sought are those that are transmitted An implacable logic served by a work without failure includes a lesson which is imposed on a generation eager for certainties and eager to meet them even where they are hidden. The fantasy of M. d'Espagnat cannot be taught. Does he himself know what obscure law prescribed him to make a corner of the blackboard sing with a red note?
Does this mean that it is advisable to oppose the achievements of these two painters? No, not. We can taste both and as for preferences, only count here the reasons of the heart which, as we know, knows no reasons.
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