| (....)they came there, Louis Riou, Gabriel Fournier, Paul de Castro (....) They came, they set up their easels, they left with their canvases, filled, to return, - but Pierre Girieud stayed, even happier, he took the walls for his art from the chapel disused for centuries and transformed into a rustic home, and to all this beauty of a Provence landscape between Cypresses and holm oaks, he wanted to incorporate that of his dream perpetually haunted by the great sovereign and religious figures through the skein of which the anxious Psyche has not ceased to pursue the secret of its destiny. (....)
Three large fresco panels, painted according to the exact formula of the old Italian masters, with the same joy and the same sincerity are raw in the plaster. Three heaps of robust and radiant bodies, in this compact formula, which characterizes Pierre Girieud himself, the anatomies constructed to express thought. Surprising sometimes, no doubt, but it is undeniable that the order of all this beautiful, well-orchestrated effort reflects intentions and aims that are not commensurate with ordinary artists. The faces have a serious and convinced beauty, which their heaviness, swollen with sap, radiates.
Here is the Coronation of Psyche. On the bottom of the rocky Alpilles, with a small round temple with columns between cypresses and oaks, Psyche, straight and bare breast, is crowned with roses by an Eros with the profile of an ephebe hardened by the games of the stadium. On the left, Venus hands the young docile woman her cup which a child who holds a fiasco has just filled. Two other children who wear roses escort Love. At the feet of these central figures, a great lying pleasure. The group on the left is made up of four women and two children: a woman seated with a garland in her hands represents the finery. Another one facing him is modesty with the two children playing at his knees. They are dominated by two of the most beautiful figures in the fresco, two carriers of baskets, one of which is Youth and the other the Dawn.
Balance is given on the right by seven characters, the three dancing Graces in the background and in the first one a sleeping woman, Laziness, another woman, coquetry who looks at herself in a mirror held by a child, while a negurbated the headdress.
The sky is the birth of a green and white dawn.
This fresco forms the central panel.
On the right, another panel represents Les Noces de Bacchus. Provencal landscape of large rocks in the azure, with a village on the left and a country house on the right. Bacchus and Ariane pass the cut under a hoop of vines. Around them a dance of bacchantes, one of which, escorted by two children, leads two panthers, and to complete the composition, on the right, a harvest scene, with the crusher, and three satyrs playing various flutes. It is carnal jubilation, the high song of sensual joy, after serious awakening and happy anxiety, on the threshold of the mystery of the election of love.
Another threshold, another mystery, another atmosphere too; the real threshold before which Psyche stops prohibited, an atmosphere, already that of the Champs Elysians. Ah! it is the most moving fresco, the one which gives its religious meaning to the whole ensemble and which I still put above the other two. The return of Eurydice to the Champs-Elysées.
In the center of three almost superhuman figures, Eurydice welcomed and restrained, comforted by two companions, who are Acceptance on the left, and Mercy on the right! A figure of a man presents him with the cup of oblivion - or rebirth. Behind it, the landscape is made up of three parts: the Acropolis with its monuments, on the left; the rocks of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, in the center; and the funeral pyramid between the cypresses of the castle of Pradines, near Grambois.
Here is the explanation given by Pierre Girieud, from the group in the third plane, on the left. A young traveler has just arrived. The character, with his back turned, is a great man of this world, who is still interested in news about the stay of men. The one whose head can only be seen, and who is the portrait of the painter, looks the most disillusioned. A fourth figure, draped in dark purple, expresses the poetry of Regret. In the background, seated and pressed against each other, two young lovers happy to meet again. At their feet Narcissus, who is finally reflected in the water of Lethe. The composition on the right is made by a group of young musicians, who sing the sweets of the living room. Bliss listens to them, half stretched out.
These three frescoes, of a great style, will be accompanied by carefully studied furnishings. (....)
-Reproduction of the Coronation of Psyche - of the Marriage of Bacchus - of the Return of Eurydice from the Champs Elysées |