DOI article:
Uzanne, Octave: Fernand Maillaud: a painter of the old French province of Berry
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43450#0287
Fernand Maillaud
imbues the whole life with an interest which one
seeks for in vain elsewhere.
It behoves us, therefore, to admire and encourage
those artists who love their art and are sufficiently
independent to specialise in the rendering of pro-
vincial customs for the sole reason that they seek
what pleases themselves rather than that which shall
be popular with a public whose taste is often as
factitious as are its opinions.
M. Fernand Maillaud is one of these proven and
conscientious specialists, one of these faithful in-
terpreters, in all methods of graphic description, of
Berry and of Creuse. He has not neglected Parisian
scenes or failed to record his impressions of Italy,
Spain, and elsewhere; we have, indeed, to thank
him for numerous paintings and studies of various
subjects; but what captivates and moves us most
in his work are those tributes which
this Berrichon artist has paid to his
well-beloved birthplace, those faithful
sketches of native types, of simple
peasant-folk, of rustic gatherings, and
his expressive renderings of the
character, the allure, the spirit and
the atmosphere which constitute the
true soul of Berry.
“ Fernand Maillaud,” M. Gabriel
Nigond was able to write in a very
sympathetic and charming essay upon
this artist, “is at present the painter
of Berry, just as Georges Sand was
the writer and Maurice Rollinas the
poet of this old French province.
One link unites them, the mysterious
and powerful racial affinity with which
all their work is impregnated. Sanity,
frank observation, and the melancholy
of the race are to be found through-
out the work of the three.”
When we examine the works of
Fernand Maillaud or these attractive
drawings of his executed in two
chalks heightened with white, in
which the solidity of his technique
and the vigorous and scholarly con-
struction of his lines, contours, figures,
and composition are all of such evi-
dent power, we realise that he has
become the interpreter of familiar
people and places whose characteris-
tics have gradually impressed them-
selves upon him, of landscapes
which his eyes have long ago taken
in, and, as it were, aesthetically
assimilated. The life of Berry stands out solemn,
peaceful, rugged, bare, and rough in the iconography
which this worthy son has dedicated to the fields
and pastures, the hamlets and the villages in which
he has lived and where he has held communion
with benign and silent Nature. He brings a
touching grace and a rare probity to his work of
translating with all their sincerity of environment
the rural customs, the awkwardness and stiffness of
the Berrichon farmers, the silhouettes of shepherds
in the meadows peopled with their flocks, the boorish
attractiveness of the horse-dealers surrounded by
their horses or the dealers in cattle collecting their
steers at the close of the fair or market.
All these studies are sincere, loyal, without any
of those tricky dexterities or those heightened
colour effects which are so often countenanced^ by
“ UN PAYSAN BERRICHON.” FROM A CHALK DRAWING BY
FERNAND MAILLAUD
imbues the whole life with an interest which one
seeks for in vain elsewhere.
It behoves us, therefore, to admire and encourage
those artists who love their art and are sufficiently
independent to specialise in the rendering of pro-
vincial customs for the sole reason that they seek
what pleases themselves rather than that which shall
be popular with a public whose taste is often as
factitious as are its opinions.
M. Fernand Maillaud is one of these proven and
conscientious specialists, one of these faithful in-
terpreters, in all methods of graphic description, of
Berry and of Creuse. He has not neglected Parisian
scenes or failed to record his impressions of Italy,
Spain, and elsewhere; we have, indeed, to thank
him for numerous paintings and studies of various
subjects; but what captivates and moves us most
in his work are those tributes which
this Berrichon artist has paid to his
well-beloved birthplace, those faithful
sketches of native types, of simple
peasant-folk, of rustic gatherings, and
his expressive renderings of the
character, the allure, the spirit and
the atmosphere which constitute the
true soul of Berry.
“ Fernand Maillaud,” M. Gabriel
Nigond was able to write in a very
sympathetic and charming essay upon
this artist, “is at present the painter
of Berry, just as Georges Sand was
the writer and Maurice Rollinas the
poet of this old French province.
One link unites them, the mysterious
and powerful racial affinity with which
all their work is impregnated. Sanity,
frank observation, and the melancholy
of the race are to be found through-
out the work of the three.”
When we examine the works of
Fernand Maillaud or these attractive
drawings of his executed in two
chalks heightened with white, in
which the solidity of his technique
and the vigorous and scholarly con-
struction of his lines, contours, figures,
and composition are all of such evi-
dent power, we realise that he has
become the interpreter of familiar
people and places whose characteris-
tics have gradually impressed them-
selves upon him, of landscapes
which his eyes have long ago taken
in, and, as it were, aesthetically
assimilated. The life of Berry stands out solemn,
peaceful, rugged, bare, and rough in the iconography
which this worthy son has dedicated to the fields
and pastures, the hamlets and the villages in which
he has lived and where he has held communion
with benign and silent Nature. He brings a
touching grace and a rare probity to his work of
translating with all their sincerity of environment
the rural customs, the awkwardness and stiffness of
the Berrichon farmers, the silhouettes of shepherds
in the meadows peopled with their flocks, the boorish
attractiveness of the horse-dealers surrounded by
their horses or the dealers in cattle collecting their
steers at the close of the fair or market.
All these studies are sincere, loyal, without any
of those tricky dexterities or those heightened
colour effects which are so often countenanced^ by
“ UN PAYSAN BERRICHON.” FROM A CHALK DRAWING BY
FERNAND MAILLAUD