Painters-travellers: discover, marvel, compare

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the “Grand Tour” was a journey through Europe (mainly France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany…) to discover other ways of life, as well as great artists and works of cultural heritage. This grand tour contributed to the evolution of artistic tastes and styles in the 17th and 18th centuries.

This intra-Western journey naturally evolved into more regular voyages to the Orient and the Far East. As from the last quarter of the 19th century, the French set out for Indochina, and Vietnam in particular.

This is where personal and isolated projects, aided by public initiatives, personified a perennial artistic trend that also contributed to the blossoming of the Indochina School of Fine Arts.

Personal projects encouraged by a collective will

Learned guilds such as La Société des peintres orientalistes, founded in 1893, or La Société coloniale des Artistes Français, founded in 1908; annual prizes including the Prix Indochine, awarded in 1914 and again between 1920 and 1938 (Victor Tardieu won it in 1920 and Jean Bouchaud in 1924, for example) ; shipping companies, which were modernizing and recruiting illustrators as well as poster artists,; magazines and newspapers (notably L’Illustration, founded in 1843, and Le Monde Illustré, founded in 1857) and their need for “correspondents” ; and military expeditions, such as the one to Tonkin in 1885-86, which Gaston Roullet accompanied. Colonial exhibitions, especially those in Marseille in 1922 and Paris in 1931, also became users of the works themselves.

At most, it’s a microcosm built on personal destinies, not a School, as shown by the different styles and varied residency patterns of the artists.

Diverse backgrounds, recurring themes, different sensibilities

Among the 14 artists selected by Philippe Damas, excellent witnesses of the traveling painter movement, it is worth noting the diversity of their backgrounds:

Gaston Roullet was a student of Jules Noël, Alix Aymé of Lucien Simon and Maurice Denis, and Louis Rollet of Eugène Cormon. Albert Cézard was self-taught, as were Jean Launois, Marcel Bernanose and René Bassouls. Jos-Henri Ponchin, Georges Barrière, and Henri Vollet graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Paris. De Marliave made a name for himself in the Salons, while Jean Bouchaud attended the Académie Julian in Paris, where Léa Lafugie and Marie-Antoinette Boullard-Devé were trained in the Arts décoratifs’ school.

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Rivers, ceremonies, buildings, portraits, market scenes, “minorities” form a common slideshow of astonishment, praise and foundation.

But each of them did not deny his personal sensibility: Roullet’s historical testimony, Cézard’s monumental solemnity, Ponchin’s naturalism, Alix Aymé’s grace, Marliave’s restraint, Barrière’s light, Vollet’s ethnography, Bouchaud’s gentleness, Launois’s intransigence, Lafugie’s objective description, Rollet’s subjugated reality, Bernanose’s concern for the line, Boullard-Devé’s completeness, and Bassoul’s tone all bear witness to this.

A significant influence on Vietnamese painting

All these painters glorified Vietnam and laid the foundation for the construction of the Indochina School of Fine Arts. Some of them became professors, and Victor Tardieu, winner of the Prix Indochine in 1920, became its founding director four years later…

Yes, discover, marvel, compare. And stay.

You can find the auction catalog by clicking HERE.

Jean-François Hubert