| The doors of the Orangerie Museum, thanks to the intervention of Gabriel Boissy and the article he wrote here, opened for Girieud and the decorations for the Hall of Honor of the University of Paris. Poitiers, decorations whose initiative goes to Mr. André François-Poncet, are visible to the Parisian public until the 24th. They will then take their final place. We see them almost as they are when the workers have put them on the walls of a large rectangular room lit on one side. At one end, a door. At the other, a monument to the dead. Above this monument will be the two paintings dedicated to victorious France to which two muses bring lyre and laurels, the other to painful France consoling orphans and widows. Above the main door, the University, represented by a draped and crowned woman, leans on the shoulder of young athletes sitting by her side. It has behind it, continuing on the wall on the right and left a landscape where are gathered the most beautiful monuments of Poitiers. In the foreground, in two groups, the great characters who are attached to local history: Gregory of Tour, Fortunat, Radegonde and Agnes, Charles VII and the Duke of Berry are on the right and at the feet of the University; on the left, Ronsard, the Bellay, Rabelais, Descartes, Bacon, the doctors and the scientists, having near them the ancient Minerva, formerly unearthed at the very site of the present buildings, which hides half the present rector and the artist who has represented himself in his work.
This table summarizes the history of the University. On the main wall, four other compositions are each devoted to one of the Faculties: Law, Letters, Medicine and Science. Law is Lycurgus and Spartan oath. The oath attended by a crowd pressed in the enclosure of a hemicycle, is lent by three characters at different ages of life: childhood, virility, old age. While behind Lycurgus, a buxom blonde sitting and seen from behind, inscribed the scene on the marble.
Letters is: Homer among shepherds. The scene is set against a landscape of bluish hills, poplar, oak and olive trees. Homer sitting on a bench, close to a young woman, holds his lyre and speaks. He is listened to by rough and vigorous inhabitants of the countryside, attentive to his remarks, ready to be enthusiastic for the poetry which comes to them and seduces them.
Aesculapius at Epidaurus evokes medicine. Aesculapius is statufié with Hygie on a base of a fountain where a mask lets flow in a basin the miraculous water towards which men and women of any age rush with faith. Here again, the landscape, which continues those who accost it, is of classic and sober lines, with its distant mountains and the bluish charm of its horizons.
Finally Pythagoras and his school represent the sciences. The teacher, surrounded by disciples, at the corner of a colonnade is stopped in front of a globe he is studying. On the ground, in front of an attentive group, a man traces geometrical figures. Close to them, to encourage scientists to modesty and remind them that Hazard is no stranger to the achievements of science, toddlers play dice.
In all, these compositions glorify classical culture in the service of French thought. Mr. Léon Bérard will be satisfied. But Girieud did not seek to work archeology. He did not attempt to document himself in the books. He let his imagination speak, guided by the pictorial feeling that harmonized the colors, made a red burst, sing the greens, exalted the beauty of the virile or feminine forms. On the side where the light comes from, between the windows, eight high panels remained to decorate. There, in trompe-l'oeil niches, stand on pedestals, eight women in monochrome, opulent and firm in their naked forms, which personify the pedagogical virtues. The most diverse allegories could claim these places: should not professors have all the virtues? Girieud chose Faith, Vocation, Abnegation, Study, Meditation, Invention, Experience and Truth. If all the masters who teach at the University of Poitiers possess in their heart the love of these virtues, they will deserve well of the whole country.
Such, this set, realized in solitude and which makes great honor to the painter to whom it cost nearly two years of work, will go to remind the speakers dedicated to the study, the spiritual and ideal value of the art.
Is it permissible to write that it will be paid to its author, less than most dioramas of the Colonial Exhibition? |