| The painting of Mr. Girieud is that of an intellectual artist who knows the museums: his Apollo inspirer deliberately recalls the Apollo and Marsyas of the Louvre, it is the same slenderness of the standing figure, they are the same trees with carefully drawn leaves ; his adoration of the Magi evokes the memory of the Pinturrichio and his Madonna, the Lombard Madonnas. Elsewhere, Provencal landscapes, not only by their subject but also by the way they are treated, make us think of Cezanne.
The technique of Mr. Girieud is no less desired: the color is spread, plated, smoothed with a knife, it looks almost burnisher, so that it turns into a kind of dull enamel. Girieud conveys frescoes in oil painting; Here we find the contours as incised, the flat tints, the attenuated tones; but why transpose two techniques whose resources are so different?
In spite of these reservations, we can praise in Mr. Girieud the harmony of his compositions, his attitudes, the ability to render, without exaggeration, the musculature of his characters, the sense of decoration, which appears not only in the subjects of 'history', but still in its Italian landscapes with fiery colors. The work which, in this exhibition, seemed to us the best, is a still life, anemones and arums on a yellow background, it is also the one that feels the least effort; Mr. Girieud has consented to remain there himself. |