Brown and green plain extends to infinity

Granet, is the name of a Museum in Aix-en-Provence which will present the features of the summer exhibition: a confrontation between Cézanne and Picasso from May 25. For the occasion, the institution will be emptied... of its Granet. Because Granet AIX painter of the 19th century who lived twenty-two years in Rome between 1802 and 1824. He was not a resident of the Villa Medici, just inspired by the country. Subsequently, he was curator at the Louvre then Versailles Castle, painter celebrated for his style neo-Gothic, dark paintings representative of capuchin monkeys in a mystical atmosphere stripped. History has somewhat forgotten him.

At this time, in parallel to this success of large-format painting, he leads an intimate work knowingly academicism guns away. Throughout his life he kept in his studio of small paintings of landscapes taken live. Works on paper that he was even careful to maroufler on canvas to ensure sustainability. That is, if it was. This research, is from the aixoises collections, which is shown to the Villa Medici to May 24: 120 works, including some of a striking modernity. He is the inaugural exhibition under the leadership of the new patron of the Academy of France in Rome, Frédéric Mitterrand. A smart choice. For lovers of the 19th century, the Villa Medici was the ferment of pictorial production which will lead for communion with nature, to Impressionism to abstraction.

The exhibition opens on a portrait of Marius Granet by Ingres. In the foreground, the face of the artist with a book to go just paint on live. Behind him, the Quirinal Palace massif. The friendship between the two men was so strong that scientists think that the bottom of the table was painted by Granet, Ingres is not a familiar landscape. The exhibition shows valuable documents as precisely these notebooks made outdoors in the Roman countryside.

Dissolution of forms

According to the curator of the exhibition, Professor of history of art in Bologna, Anna Ottani Lieut. "he painted at this time the oil on paper." This technique, fast, the shoot to be more intuitive. He paints not "universal light" fruit of his imagination in the workshop, but the weather details, clear light of the time. "These Roman views have voluntarily an appearance of non-fini. They are therefore without commercial. She compares this secret production to the music: "It's the Schubert rather than Beethoven's". And added: "There is nothing picturesque." Not of small dancers to animate the landscape, not imposing views of Roman buildings. "The result is breathtaking and shows the anticipation of Granet on Jean-Baptiste Corot that will yet take posterity very"nature"Italian landscapes His "crest of a hill crowned pine in the light of the night" is a "tableautin", in which the sky blue, dark, white and yellow occupies four fifths of the space. A volume of trees is treated as a ghost in black. "The rain in the Valley of the Tiber", it is also the sky, this time weighing, and, in the foreground, a large part of the paper occupied by a dark beige dust cloud. Brown and green plain extends to infinity. The Commissioner compared these effects to Turner at the same time. "There is dissolution of forms."

To accentuate this effect, Granet employs a cloth to apply on the still wet paint to wash out the matter. Small paintings give a powerful sense of romanticism. Power and beauty of nature with tiny human. Previously Granet does not use watercolour, a technique for the girls of good family. But clearly, under English influence, returning to Paris, he makes. It performs almost liquid landscapes as in his "view of the Royal deck". It uses the white of the paper such a color, as later another AIX, Paul Cézanne, the will also. Historians say that it is extensively addressed, at the Granet Museum, on the drawings of his predecessor. It's like this that the history of art is built.